Cuba - For decades, 2 million tourists a year have traveled and enjoyed conversations and contact with the natives without changing the Cuban regime in any way.

The New Cuba Policy: Fallacies and Implications

by José Azel

Following President Obama’s announcement of a rapprochement with the Cuban regime, US government officials have offered three basic avenues to the economic reforms they say will ultimately result in greater personal freedom for the island’s citizens: fostering the small-enterprise sector in Cuba, encouraging US investments, and boosting US tourism to the island. These efforts to produce prosperity, together with the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, they believe, will advance US security and democratic governance in Cuba. Critics of the initiative, however, believe that this new policy is, as Samuel Johnson said of second marriages, a triumph of hope over experience, and that in the long run it will harm US national interests almost as much as it disappoints the Cuban people.

The architects of the new policy rationalize that unconditionally ending economic sanctions will strengthen Cuba’s self-employed sector and, thus, foster a civil society more independent of the government. Eventually, they explain, this more autonomous civil society will undergo a revolution of rising expectations that will pressure the regime for democratic governance.

In theory, a good idea. In reality, however, more easily theorized than implemented. In a totalitarian system such as that which has afflicted Cuba for more than half a century, those in self-employed activities remain bound to the government for the very existence of their businesses, which will be subject to the licenses, sanctions, etc. by which the system asserts its power. Rather than conferring independence from the government, self-employment in a totalitarian context makes the newly minted entrepreneurs more beholden to government and governmental controls in myriad bureaucratic ways and not likely to challenge those who have power over them.

Under totalitarian rule, there is nothing intrinsically liberating about having a business. During the student protest in Tiananmen Square, China’s business community did not come out in support of the students. Nor, more recently, were the business communities in Hong Kong willing to jeopardize their status—something dependent on the sufferance of the government—by supporting students promoting democratic change. What makes administration officials think that a Cuban business community bound to an all-powerful state for its very existence would act differently?

Supporters of the new policy believe that a critical mass of self-employment will make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the regime to resist the social pressures for change. The vision is of thousands of new micro-firms operating as an unstoppable force for change. But in addition to being tainted by economic determinism, it is also a vision that fails to account for the nature of the Cuban regime or the lessons of Cuban history.

Beginning in the early days of the revolution and climaxing with Fidel Castro’s “Revolutionary Offensive” of 1968, the Cuban regime embarked on an effort to eliminate all private property. First came the expropriations of foreign enterprises, followed by the expropriation of large Cuban-owned businesses, and finally all economic activity was taken over in 1968.

According to Cuban government statistics, 55,636 micro-enterprises, mostly of one or two persons, were confiscated during this period. Among them, 11,878 food retailers, 3,130 meat retailers, 3,198 bars, 8,101 food establishments, 6,653 dry cleaners, 3,345 carpentry workshops, 4,544 automobile mechanic shops, 1,598 artisan shops, and 1,188 shoeshine stands.

Even this sizable private sector (which had experienced the imperfect but comparatively lively economic freedom of the pre-Castro era) was brought to heel by the regime in less than a decade. It was part of a civil society still imbued with the political principles of the 1940s Cuban Constitution enshrining liberty, yet it was unable to resist the communization of the island, or mitigate the aims of the regime.

Not coincidentally, this period of the eradication of self-employed entrepreneurs was the most brutally repressive of the Castro era, with thousands of executions and tens of thousands of long-term political prisoners. A strong argument could be made that self-employment without the guarantees of political freedom is an invitation to intensified repression, which could in fact be one of the unintended consequences of the new policy.

The self-employment Cuba now permits involves 201 subsistence activities, such as repairing umbrellas and peeling fruits, where work is done only by government permit. Its participants are mostly individuals born after 1959 with no living memories of political freedom. It is hard to imagine them as a sophisticated vanguard for democratic reform. 

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Readmore: www.worldaffairsjournal.org

Is Seumas Milne a Stalinist? And if so, why did Corbyn hire him?

The Stalinist Past Of Corbyn’s Strategist

by MICHAEL MOSBACHER

Is Seumas Milne, appointed in October by Jeremy Corbyn as executive director of strategy and communications for the Labour Party, a Stalinist? And if so, why did Corbyn hire him?

Milne was, until his new appointment, Associate Editor and previously Comment Editor of the Guardian. It is odd for a senior figure on a respected national newspaper to have the whiff of Stalinism about him, odder still for such a person to be at the heart of one of Britain’s two main political parties. He describes himself on Twitter as being “on leave” from the paper, implying that he may well go back once his foray into practical politics is over.

He is not your standard-issue Corbynista. While Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet was full of Oxbridge graduates, many with PPE degrees, Corbyn’s is noticeably different. Corbyn himself never graduated — he completed one year of a course on trade union studies at North London Polytechnic. More generally, the Corbyn shadow cabinet’s background is more working- and lower-middle-class than was that of Miliband’s team. By contrast, the former Guardian Editor Peter Preston says of Milne, “He is extremely clever in a Winchester and Oxbridge way.”

Seumas was born in 1958, the son of Alasdair Milne, then a BBC producer and later Director-General of the corporation. His father’s conflicts with the Thatcher government may well have played a part in radicalising Seumas. Alasdair Milne was forced out by the BBC board and its chairman Marmaduke Hussey in 1987 in large part, as Jean Seaton recounts in her authorised history Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and the Nation 1974-1987 (Profile, £30), for a perception of left-wing bias and more specifically his handling of “Maggie’s Militant Tendency”, an episode of Panorama made by Michael Cockerell alleging far-right involvement in the Conservative Party. The programme’s claims fell apart, specifically the notion that there was an attempt to infiltrate the party by far-right elements analogous to the organised infiltration of Labour by the Militant Tendency. The BBC was sued for libel over the programme by three MPs named in it — their action partly funded by the billionaire Jimmy Goldsmith — and the BBC eventually made an out-of-court settlement of nearly £1 million, according to Seaton.

Like his father before him, Seumas was sent to Winchester College, a far cry from Adams’ Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire, where Corbyn got his two grade Es at A level. According to the Guido Fawkes website, Milne bragged to a former colleague that he spent his gap year at a training camp in Lebanon run by the Leninist terrorist organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It seems likely that this was more leftist posturing than an accurate depiction of what he did in his gap year; there are rather more public schoolboys who are revolutionary poseurs than those who actually spend time training with guerrillas. Whatever happened in his gap year, Seumas then read PPE at Balliol College, Oxford.

At Oxford, Milne became involved with far-left politics, more specifically with the “opposition” within the Communist Party of Great Britain. The official party was, of course, a Leninist organisation and thus by definition espoused the principle of democratic centralism. This is, if you like, a version of cabinet collective responsibility writ large. There is meant to be debate within the party, but once a decision is taken it is binding not just on the inner leadership but on the membership as a whole. Failure to support the party line is an offence meriting expulsion. In practice, what Leninist organisations neglected in most instances was not the centralism but the democracy. Policies were imposed by the leadership and binding on all members.

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Read more: standpointmag.co.uk

Reagan and Gorbachev managed to find a common language - the men who would forever transform the course of modern history and politics.

The Battle Of Wills That The Soviet Union Lost

by EDWARD LUCAS

The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991
By Robert Service, Macmillan

As the Cold War recedes into our memories, myths are crystallising. One is that Mikhail Gorbachev, a humane and visionary man, ended it by peacefully dismantling the Soviet empire. Another is that Ronald Reagan, the greatest of freedom-lovers, rolled back Communism through his willpower and inspirational rhetoric.

Reality was a lot more complicated, and Robert Service’s masterly history of the end of the Cold War shows why. The story he depicts is of confusion, fear and misunderstanding, both within and between the two camps. Reagan was not the carefree cowboy of popular caricature, but a sensitive and thoughtful man who was overwhelmed with worry that nuclear war could destroy the planet. His Soviet interlocutors were rivals at the beginning, supplicants by the end. But they never fully realised that the system they were trying to reform was doomed.

The focus of the book is on arms control, and on the relations of the “big four”: Reagan and Gorbachev, and two exceptionally able foreign ministers, George Shultz and Eduard Shevardnadze. Service — one of Britain’s best historians of Russia — draws on archives, diaries, news accounts and other materials to flesh out their meetings, rows and dilemmas during the last years of the Cold War. Both sides knew the situation was unbearably perilous. Both knew it had to change. Both were constrained by their own propaganda, and the expectations of their own camps.

This creates a neat framework for a sprawling series of events. The Cold War was not just about mutually assured destruction and the division of Europe. It spilled over into every continent. The Soviet Union and the United States fought proxy wars on the ground, and blasted each other with propaganda. Each was convinced that the other was bent on its destruction. Yet in the space of five years, the new Soviet leadership and the Reagan White House found a common language and settled their differences.

I worked as a journalist covering Germany, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during those years and Robert Service’s book fills in many of the gaps in my memories and understanding of events. He portrays vividly the almost erotic relationship between Margaret Thatcher and the Soviet leader — both hating to be interrupted, but happily interrupting each other. He gives a powerful sense of the disputes in both the Kremlin and the White House: the scepticism among hardliners, the determination of both leaders to overcome seemingly insuperable difficulties, and the worries of allies. He has a good understanding of the power relationships involved. The United States did not quite realise how weak the Soviet Union had become. For their part the Soviet leadership was only beginning to discover the true failure of the planned economy.

Professor Service meticulously documents the ins and outs of the diplomatic story. For those of us who have forgotten the intricacies and significance of the Pershing and Cruise missile deployment in Europe, or the importance of “Star Wars” — President Reagan’s visionary, costly and impractical idea of creating a missile-defence shield for the United States — this book is a powerful reminder. It is well worth remembering too that Reagan’s optimism about sweeping nuclear disarmament horrified his European allies: without America’s nuclear shield, they would be left facing the overwhelming conventional superiority of the Warsaw Pact.

Some of the mysteries remain unanswered. What was Gorbachev really up to in the last disastrous year of his rule? Shevardnadze resigned in December 1990, warning that dictatorship was round the corner. How much did Gorbachev know about the August putsch in 1991? Was he really the plotters’ victim, or also their accomplice? What happened to the Communist Party’s money, and the KGB’s slush funds, which were funnelled out of the Soviet Union towards the end, and played an important role in helping the old regime reinvent itself in capitalist clothes? On the American side, what was the role of Saudi Arabia in driving down the oil price in order deliberately to destroy the Soviet economy? The book devotes only two sentences to this vital question.

A bigger flaw in its high-level narrative is that it broadly treats the Soviet Union and the West as equals. In a sense that is true. Each had the capacity to obliterate the other. But it would be a mistake to ascribe equal moral weight to both. Reagan was right when he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire”: it was evil, and it was an empire. America was neither. France was able to leave Nato’s command structure. There was no Western equivalent of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, the crushing of the Hungarian uprising, or martial law in Poland. Western Europe was part of the West because it wanted to be. Eastern Europe was under Kremlin rule because the Red Army had conquered it in 1945. That is a big difference. Might becomes right eventually (think of the Sioux, or the ancient Britons). But not that quickly.

The fundamental illegitimacy of the Soviet system is not just a detail. It is at the heart of the story of the Soviet collapse. American negotiators were in a position of strength not just because their economy was bigger and their military stronger, but because they represented a free society and were negotiating with slave-masters. Shultz, Weinberger and the other denizens of the Reagan White House were not perfect, but they had not risen to the heights of power by sucking up to mass murderers, denouncing colleagues, and bending their brains to fit the party line. Their counterparts in the Soviet Union had done all that and more. The shadow of Stalinism, and its millions of victims, hung heavy over the Soviet Union to the day it died. For all America’s flaws, there was no commensurate moral baggage.

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Read more: standpointmag.co.uk

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Notre monde est en crise et nous avons oublié vers qui nous tourner

Notre monde est en crise : vers qui se tourner sinon Marie ?


par Anne Dolhein


Les crises dont nous nous lamentons aujourd’hui sont celles qui nous touchent matériellement, ou qui font peur. La crise financière a affolé tout le monde et la « confiance » de la France se mesure à ses projets d’achats ou aux carnets de commandes de ses entreprises. Oui, cela fait partie de la vie. Mais ce n’est pas l’essentiel. On a vu, on continue de voir des centaines de milliers de migrants se presser vers l’Europe. Et bien des Européens craignent, à juste titre, pour leur tranquillité et leur mode de vie. Sont venus les attentats de Paris, ressentis comme une blessure directe. Et voilà qu’on se sent impuissant, à la merci du djihadisme conquérant, une situation aggravée par l’impéritie délibérée des forces politiques et l’insuffisance des forces armées. Notre monde est en crise et nous avons oublié vers qui nous tourner. La réponse est pourtant là, simple, lumineuse : elle a été donnée à Fatima. Il faut se tourner vers Marie. Il le faut parce tout le reste est doublement sans espoir. Toutes les solutions humaines qu’on nous propose ignorent la dimension essentielle de la crise. Et elles fondent leurs espoirs sur des promesses incertaines, peut-être même dangereuses.

Nous fêtons aujourd’hui, jour pour jour, le 185e anniversaire de l’apparition de la Vierge Marie à sainte Catherine Labouré où elle lui montra l’image de la médaille qu’elle souhaitait voir frappée en l’honneur de son Immaculée Conception. Non pas comme talisman, mais comme portrait de notre Mère bien-aimée, soucieuse de notre bien et de notre bonheur éternel, rappel des grâces innombrables qu’elle répand sur ceux qui veulent bien les demander.

Lourdes, Pontmain, Rue du Bac : la France chérie de l’Immaculée doit répondre à ses demandes


Depuis lors, que ce soit à La Salette, à Lourdes, à Pontmain, à Fatima, ou à Akita, la Vierge Marie n’a cessé de dire à ses enfants qu’ils doivent prier et faire pénitence en raison des malheurs qui viendront faute de conversion du monde. A Fatima plus encore qu’ailleurs, elle a dit l’efficacité de la dévotion à son Cœur Immaculé contre les « erreurs » que la Russie allait répandre dans le monde.

Ces erreurs, on peine à en faire le compte. Depuis le communisme qui n’est pas mort à l’idéologie du genre prêchée aux enfants dans les écoles, depuis l’acceptation généralisée et complice du mal et de la mort comme « solution » dans le monde occidental (c’est cela, le sens de la culture de mort) à la manipulation de la vie qui en est une facette, depuis l’anéantissement des frontières jusqu’à la disparition des nations – violente ou dissoutes dans le conglomérat mondialiste, qui le sait – on a le sentiment d’un écroulement général. Un écroulement qui se résume en trois mots : révolte contre Dieu.

Comme si Satan, qui mène si évidemment le bal, était véritablement le maître du monde.

Aujourd’hui la mode est à la recherche d’une solution politique. Elisez Marine, les choses rentreront dans l’ordre autant que faire se peut, car elle a la volonté politique qui manque aux hommes en place ! Faisons alliance avec Poutine, car il a de la volonté et de la puissance, en outre, et il est de notre côté !

Se tourner vers Marine, vers Poutine, alors que le monde s’enfonce dans toutes les crises ?

Vraiment ? Pour Marine Le Pen la question se pose pourtant : même en laissant de côté son refus de souligner la nature spirituelle de la crise, même en admettant qu’elle ne se préoccupe pas des causes qui nous ont mené là où nous sommes, quelle efficacité peut-elle avoir au point où nous en sommes ? Bien plus que dans les pays d’Europe de l’Est, les pays jadis dits « libres » sont gangrénés de l’intérieur de toutes les manières que l’on sait, mais d’abord par l’athéisme et l’amoralisme rampants – avec leur expression politique qui est le laïcisme – auxquels le Front national souscrit largement.

Et Poutine ? Oui, Poutine, qui condamne l’idéologie LGBT, qui promeut la famille, qui veut une Russie forte, qui n’oublie pas les racines chrétiennes de son pays ! On n’entend plus parler que de lui. Comme s’il était le rempart face à l’américanisme et l’islamisme. Au mondialisme, même !

Marie, forte comme une armée rangée pour la bataille

Et pourtant, Poutine est compagnon de toutes les entreprises régionalistes et mondialistes – comme le signalent patiemment, semaine après semaine, les articles de ce site. Il fait partie du concert des nations comme jadis les Soviétiques. Il ose des actions fortes, mais n’oublie jamais son intérêt. Moscou a ses bars gays et la Russie reste un pays où l’on avorte à tour de bras, où l’on ne crache pas sur l’argent des couples en recherche de mères porteuses. La Russie est alliée de la Chine et des démocraties socialistes sud-américaines. L’américanisme est une erreur ? Oui, mais il ne faut pas oublier qu’Obama a lui aussi une formation marxiste…

La Russie s’est-elle convertie, comme le promettait Notre Dame de Fatima à condition qu’elle soit nommément consacrée à son Cœur Immaculé ? Aurait-elle par hasard rejoint l’unité de l’Eglise fondée par le Christ sur ce roc qu’est Pierre ?

Nous savons bien que non.

Mais nous avons au moins cette certitude. Qui que nous soyons, nous sommes armés. Mieux encore, nous sommes sûrs de vaincre. Avec le chapelet. Avec la prière. Qui sait, pour certains, par le martyre. En tout cas, en priant pour la conversion des pauvres pécheurs, y compris ceux qui persécutent notre monde et tentent vainement de remplir son vide.

Source: reinformation.tv

Un report sullo stato di salute dell’istituto del matrimonio e della famiglia

La situazione dei matrimoni in Italia

di Tommaso Scandroglio

L’Istat ha pubblicato un report sullo stato di salute dell’istituto del matrimonio e della famiglia. Qualche dato riferibile all’anno 2014. Si sono celebrati quasi 190mila matrimoni, 4.300 in meno rispetto all’anno precedente. Nel periodo 2009-2013 il calo è stato in media di 10mila matrimoni all’anno.

Dal 2008 al 2014 i matrimoni sono diminuiti di 57mila unità. Uno dei motivi è anche anagrafico: ci sono meno giovani di una volta e quindi meno persone che si sposano. Se però andiamo a vedere quanti uomini e donne su 1.000 si sposano ci rendiamo conto che l’inverno demografico conta relativamente: dal 2008 al 2014 il calo è del 19%. Ci si sposa poi sempre più in età matura: 34 anni per gli uomini, 31 per le donne (un anno in più per entrambi i sessi dal 2008). Quindi diminuiscono i matrimoni, ma nella diminuzione crescono i matrimoni con solo rito civile: siamo al 43% sul totale.

Al Nord addirittura i matrimoni civili hanno sorpassato quelli religiosi: 55%. In merito invece a separazioni e divorzi questi rimangono sostanzialmente stabili come numero assoluto. Ma attenzione a leggere bene i dati. Se negli anni ci si sposa sempre meno e il numero dei fallimenti matrimoniali si assestano, vuol dire che in realtà questi stanno aumentando in percentuale. Se sommiamo separazioni e divorzi avvenuti nel 2014 arriviamo al numero di 140mila. Nel 2014 quindi 190mila sono state le coppie che si sono sposate e 140mila quelle che hanno deciso di rompere con il coniuge. Ovviamente in quest’ultima cifra confluiscono matrimoni, poi falliti, celebrati in tutti gli anni precedenti e dunque c’è un effetto sommatorio che porta a simile esorbitante numero.

L’Istat ci informa poi che i matrimoni durano in media 16 anni, ma quelli più recenti vanno a gambe all’aria sempre prima. L’età media in cui ci si separa è intorno ai 45 anni. Nel 70% dei casi le coppie che si separano o che divorziano hanno figli. In merito alle convivenze queste sono raddoppiate dal 2008 al 2014, superando il milione. Sono dieci volte tanto invece rispetto al 1993. In Nord Italia il 50% delle coppie che si sposa ha prima convissuto. Il 25% dei bambini che nascono in Italia vengono alla luce da coppie conviventi.

E dunque in sintesi: ci si sposa di meno, i matrimoni durano sempre di meno, crescono le separazioni e divorzi e crescono le convivenze. Ancora più in sintesi: il rapporto di coppia è denotato da fragilità e precarietà. E così la convivenza assomiglia sempre più al matrimonio – vedi durata della convivenza che si allunga e il fatto che nascono sempre più bambini tra le coppie di fatto – e il matrimonio assomiglia sempre più alla convivenza – vedi durata sempre più breve e il fatto che nascono sempre meno figli tra coppie coniugate. Quali i motivi? Sono ovviamente dei più vari ma qui vogliamo accennare a quelli che attengono all’idea di amore che hanno in testa i giovani. Esistono delle vere e proprie patologie che infiacchiscono l’amore.

Prima patologia: l’egoismo e l’individualismo. L’altro è in funzione di me e rimango insieme a lui finché è utile alla mia serenità e benessere. Se il coniuge chiude i rubinetti del suo amore anche l’altro coniuge farò lo stesso. E così spesso dietro alle parole “Ti amo” si nasconde in realtà questa espressione: “Quanto è bello essere voluti bene da te”. È l’amore a specchio: io rifletto i raggi d’affetto che provengono dall’altra persona che è il mio sole, ma appena questo viene oscurato da una nuvola ecco che anch’io cesso di riflettere il suo amore.

Altra patologia: mancanza di responsabilità e maturità. Non si vuole un legame per sempre. Ecco perché si privilegia la convivenza, proprio perché si esclude l’indissolubilità e l’esclusività dell’amore matrimoniale. Chi convive infatti non ama, perché amare significa “Ci sei solo tu e per sempre”, caratteristiche proprie solo del vincolo coniugale. Invece si preferisce un rapporto liquido: la convivenza infatti è un po’ come essere sposati e un po’ come non esserlo. Esserci e non esserci, con la possibilità poi di uscirne con facilità ed immediatezza.

Si scambia poi il sentimento d’amore con l’amore, ma quest’ultimo è volere il bene dell’altro. L’amore si incardina sulla volontà non sui sentimenti, che sono sì importanti ma non costituiscono l’essenza dell’amore. La volontà allora persiste nonostante le difficoltà e i cambiamenti umorali, il sentimento per sua natura è invece incostante e mutevole. Ci si innamora spontaneamente, ma poi deve intervenire la volontà per continuare ad amare.

I giovani sono poi affetti spesso da mancanza di realismo: la vita matrimoniale appare facile e quasi scontata. Ed invece non esiste realtà umana che non sia difficile. Inoltre le mete più sono alte più comportano dedizione ed impegno. C’è da aggiungere poi che i fidanzati, prima di sposarsi, si conoscono poco. È una conoscenza che il più delle volte si arresta alla superficie: l’aspetto fisico, il carattere, gli interessi, etc. Ma manca un confronto sugli aspetti di fondo della vita: la concezione della famiglia, il valore dei figli, la dimensione religiosa, etc. Le coppie scoppiano allora non per motivi caratteriali – uno delle motivazioni che troviamo più frequentemente negli atti di divorzio – ma perché i punti di partenza della vita di lui e di lei sono divergenti, non assimilabili.

Aggiungiamo poi una mentalità consumistica che ha investito anche i rapporti di coppia – se una cosa/una relazione non funziona la butto e ne cerco un’altra più nuova – nonché l’influsso dei media e dei costumi diffusi – se tutti convivono e divorziano allora lo posso fare anch’io – ed ecco spiegato lo stato comatoso del matrimonio ed invece l’ottima forma fisica di cui gode la convivenza.

www.corrispondenzaromana.it

The importance of the moral imagination in learning the True, the Good, and the Beautiful

Educating the Moral Imagination: The Truth of Beauty


by Benjamin Lockerd

Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

— Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

These famous lines of Keats have charmed and delighted readers for nearly two centuries, but skeptics have scoffed at his claim, especially as beauty is well known to be wholly subjective, a value found only “in the eye of the beholder.” Even those of us who are inclined to agree with the poet’s bold statement have been known to wonder whether this is really all we need to know. Surely we must add at least two other categories to the formula, for philosophers have long considered three subjects of contemplation to be paramount: the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. These topics give rise to the three prime branches of philosophy: metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. All three of these are considered by many people today purely relativistic concepts, and one of the goals of the Catholic educator must be to contradict the prevailing relativism, which is practically taken for granted even by many Catholic students, since, as T. S. Eliot says, secularism today “holds all the most valuable advertising space.”

In my experience, these students are more likely to grant me metaphysical claims than claims about morality and beauty. If I say that the universe is not merely atoms and void, not merely matter, they tend to agree. It becomes more contentious if I say that there are universal moral truths. If I give as an example the claim that it is always wrong to enslave another person, they will readily agree, but if I say it is wrong (on essentially the same principle) to use human embryos for scientific research, I will have an argument with some. If I say that it is also wrong (still largely for the same reason) to bring about the conception of a human being in a laboratory in order to help an infertile couple have a child, I may meet with incredulity or even be denounced as a heartless disbeliever in the sanctity of motherhood.

Of the three terms, however, beauty is the one that has most thoroughly succumbed to relativistic thought. If I make any claim whatsoever, my students are likely to look at me blankly; if they find I am serious about it, they are likely to confront me vociferously, maintaining what everyone knows, that judgments of beauty are purely subjective. What one person thinks beautiful, another will think ugly. And of course there is a great deal of truth to this view, since there is indeed great variation in taste when it comes to music, or art, or architecture. Let us admit from the outset, then, that standards of beauty are subject to social and personal variation. But, having allowed that there are socially conditioned tastes, let us nevertheless maintain that there are universals in the realm of aesthetics as well as in ethics and metaphysics. Let us take on the charge of relativism where our defense seems most vulnerable and thereby demonstrate the strength of our general belief that the universe has been created in a particular way by almighty God so that certain things in the universe are always true, good, and beautiful in themselves. Furthermore, let us help our students cultivate a rich imaginative sense, in the confidence that it will help them really see and feel the truths of the moral law.

Aesthetics is as old as philosophy itself. Plato argued that there were eternal forms in the ideal realm that were the source of all beauty in the physical world and then in art. He emphasized the universality of geometrical figures, the circle, the triangle, and the square. Here are shapes that are indeed everywhere regarded as beautiful and that are found at the basis of more complex forms (such as Renaissance paintings in which the main figures in a composition form a triangular shape). However, there are a couple of problems with Plato’s approach. First, as a thoroughgoing idealist, he regarded the forms of the physical world as pale and imperfect copies of the eternal forms, and at times he seems to regard artistic representations as even further removed from true beauty. In the Republic, Socrates famously states that poetic mimesis is thrice removed from ideal reality, concluding that poets must therefore be banned from the state. Many Plato scholars regard the entire utopian scheme of this dialogue as ironic, for it begins with Socrates’ interlocutor insisting on luxuries in the ideal state and the master acquiescing and agreeing to think of an ideal government for a “feverish” society. Nevertheless, the question had been raised as to whether the arts could present truth or were only good for pleasure (a pleasure which might, according to Socrates, merely encourage irrational passions). The other problem with Plato’s aesthetic theory is that his ideal forms are indeed universal but of a limited range. It is not clear that geometry can really account for all the beauty of the world and of the arts.

Aristotle took a more balanced view of the physical and spiritual worlds, asserting that matter cooperates with form rather than obscuring it. For him, the physical world is not an illusory and deceitful copy of the ideal world, but is real and meaningful. Here Aristotle seems to intuit something approaching the Christian view of created matter, and it is largely for this reason that he became the favorite of Catholic theologians. In his Poetics, Aristotle states that poetry has the capacity to present the universal realities of “human action and life.” He goes on to say that “Poetry, therefore, is more philosophical and more significant than history, for poetry is more concerned with the universal and history more with the individual.” Here, for the first time, is the claim that beauty is truth: a good work of art captures universal truths about humanity.

St. Augustine was sometimes nervous about the power of art. For instance, he became concerned if he found himself too caught up in the music of the liturgy. At the same time, he gave one of the enduring definitions of beauty, namely that it is a harmonizing of parts in an ordered whole. This definition of beauty seems to me to be that best and most comprehensive. Beautiful works have a complexity of parts resolved in an integral wholeness. They exhibit multiplicity in unity. Augustine also asserted that judgments of beauty could be objectively valid.

St. Thomas Aquinas similarly argued that beautiful things have integrity, an integration of separate parts, as well as proportion and harmony (which seems to me to be another word for integrity or wholeness, since harmony is a resolution of different elements). Aquinas also points out that the true experience of beauty is not only sensory but also intellectual—that it is a kind of knowing. Perhaps he was the first to make this distinction between beauty, which has this cognitive element interfused with sensory experience, and simple physical pleasure, which is exclusively sensory. This is another way of saying that beauty has to do with truth, not just with entertainment. St. Thomas wisely admits, however, that the term “beauty” is difficult to define and has different senses when applied to different things.

What Christianity added to the ideas of the ancient philosophers on this topic was the assurance that God had created the universe in such a way that it was inherently meaningful. According to the Christian view, everything in the world is a creature of God and a reflection of one part of His infinite goodness. The universe itself is the ultimate work of art, exhibiting to an astonishing degree that integration of parts within the whole. Thus the beautiful orderliness of the world is itself a reflection of God and a proof of His existence. Our sacramental theology insists that the most profound spiritual moments are experienced in and through the physical world. Baptism requires water; Communion, bread and wine; other sacraments, oil. The sacraments are perfect works of art, for their physical elements not only symbolize but really embody or enact spiritual realities. A sacrament is, by definition “a symbol that effects what it signifies.” The water of baptism signifies spiritual cleansing and effects spiritual cleansing. The bread of communion signifies the body of Christ and is the body of Christ.

The greatest poet of the Middle Ages was inspired by these beliefs. Dante saw the Divine Comedy as allegorical, that is, as having meaning at several levels—but with all those levels springing from the literal level of the poem. This most spiritual poem is at the same time intensely physical and piercingly beautiful. Many find the Inferno the best part, but the Purgatorio and Paradiso are powerful as well. In fact, the whole work may be read as a meditation on the interaction of the physical and spiritual. Inferno is filled with physical, bodily images, while Paradiso uses ethereal and even mathematical forms to hint at the mysteries of the Godhead. Purgatorio is in between, and it is here that the reader encounters that in-between phenomenon, art. Everywhere there is singing and poetry, and in one striking example there are carvings in marble of the Annunciation, sculpture so good that the poet feels as if he hears the angel saying Ave. The Purgatorio is also full of rituals, for both art and ritual unite immediate physical experience with transcendent spiritual meaning. Though the Paradiso must necessarily be more abstract, it is full of beautiful images of light, turning wheels, and the cosmic dance. Since we believe in the resurrection of the body, Dante envisions a physical reality even in heaven. The final canto begins with a reminder of the incarnation, with the poet addressing Mary as figlia del tuo figlio, daughter of your son. Though she transcends time in this paradoxical relationship, it is through her that the Lord enters the temporal world. The canto ends with a vision of the blessed Trinity as three circles of light reflecting each other, and then with a sudden glimpse of “our human effigy” in the second circle. The highest vision is not of a completely immaterial deity but of the incarnate Lord. It is that perfect union of spirit and matter that makes objective beauty possible and inevitable.

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