It’s a Terrible Day in the Neighborhood, and That’s O.K.

It’s a Terrible Day in the Neighborhood, and That’s O.K. 

Fred Rogers’s belief that we should validate emotions, not suppress them, is wisdom for all ages. 

By Mariana Alessandri NY TIMES an associate professor of philosophy, at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. 

On the 51st anniversary of the first taping of the classic children’s show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” Google published an animated “doodle” commemorating him. It depicts Mister Rogers walking through the neighborhood interacting with a variety of people, including a small child with his head hung low. Rogers fashions a paper airplane for the boy, which instantly cheers him up. People commonly caricature Mister Rogers like this — a gentle man intent on making everyone happy — but that may be more a reflection of America’s discomfort with dark emotions than of the man himself. The last thing Fred Rogers would do for a sad boy is distract him from his sadness. 

Anyone who watched “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” would know that the host considered all feelings natural — including the dark ones — and believed they don’t need fixing. Many of the children raised watching the program are now parents, and a new appreciation for Fred Rogers has blossomed thanks to the 2018 documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” and the feature film “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” starring Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers. Today, Rogers’ philosophy of difficult emotions stands a chance of being heard and heeded. 

As a child I preferred the frenetic energy of “Sesame Street” to the dull pace of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” but that changed when I had children of my own and wondered how to raise them thoughtfully without depriving them of television. In my classroom, I regularly teach Neil Postman’s book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” in which he raises a critical eyebrow at attempts to put serious discourse on television, and especially at shows like “Sesame Street” that label themselves as “educational.” Mr. Postman implies that slow and even boring shows stand a better chance of teaching children important lessons than fast-paced, loud ones. 

My memory of that boring show made me curious to see whether it offered anything valuable. It did, and so began my awakening to Rogers. With (and sometimes without) my children, I’ve watched hundreds of episodes of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” over the last seven years. I’ve read everything written by and about Fred Rogers and seen all the footage I could find. I saw the 2018 documentary once in the theater and then went back again to take notes. I went into “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” skeptical, since it’s much easier to get him wrong than right — and it’s critical that we get Fred Rogers right — but I kept my fingers crossed. The film’s emotional depth surprised me; in direct contrast to the Google doodle, it thoroughly conveys Rogers’ philosophy of difficult emotions. It makes sense: the cast and crew had to study Rogers to make the film, which is what’s required to accurately represent the man, to animate the caricature. 

Despite his sweet pastor’s demeanor, Rogers was tuned into our soul’s darkest feelings. He had an uncommon appreciation for anger, fear, stress, sadness, disappointment and loneliness. He respected the range of emotions and encouraged children to accept all their feelings as natural. This conviction came early: As an only child to proper New England parents, Rogers was discouraged from acknowledging sadness. This, along with Rogers’ childhood experience of getting bullied for being overweight, made “Fat Freddy,” as he was called, acutely aware that too often, and usually inadvertently, adults silence children instead of showing them how to deal with troubling feelings. 

Rogers believed that variations of the “sticks-and-stones” adages intended to get kids to “shake it off” are stifling; they abandon children to their pain instead of teaching them how to process it. In contrast, Rogers encouraged children to face their dark feelings. Not a trained philosopher, Rogers would likely attribute his education in the emotional landscape of children to the psychologist Dr. Margaret McFarland at the University of Pittsburg, with whom he collaborated for 30 years. And yet there is a foundation for the sort of philosophy of feelings Fred Rogers practiced that can be traced back more than 2,000 years to Ancient Greece. 

In the “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle described our souls as being made up of feelings, predispositions and active conditions. Our predispositions name our go-to emotions, the ones we feel most often in response to certain stimuli. Some people are prone to sadness, others to anger, and the occasional few to genuine cheerfulness. Our feelings, like twigs, catch a spark every time we brush past life’s embers, but only ignite when they get stoked by our predispositions. Two individuals responding differently to the same event — getting fired, for example — Aristotle would attribute to their differing predispositions. 

I am predisposed to anger, which played better in New York where I grew up than in South Texas where I now live, and yet it humanizes me to students. Those who share my predisposition relax their shoulders when I tell them they’re not alone, and they laugh when I say I’m jealous of people who cry easily instead of wanting to punch somebody. 

Feelings and predispositions matter, for Aristotle, but more for the sake of self-knowledge than self-improvement. It’s helpful to know which feelings I am predisposed to as well as what I am feeling at any given moment, but these two categories are much harder to budge than the third. Aristotle described active conditions as “how we bear ourselves” in the face of our feelings. As a believer in right action, Aristotle suggested that we train our souls to react beautifully to an ugly mess. He was implying that we not fret too much over our troublesome feelings or stubborn predispositions. 

Indeed, Aristotle would discourage us from shaming ourselves over feeling sad when we “should” feel happy. He rejected “shoulds” altogether when it came to feelings, since he believed them to be natural and, without accompanying wrong action, harmless. All feelings, for Aristotle, are potentially useful in that they provide an opportunity to practice behaving well. Feelings alone can’t jeopardize virtue, he believed, but actions can and often do. Mister Rogers agreed: “Everyone has lots of ways of feeling. And all of those feelings are fine. It’s what we do with our feelings that matter in this life.” 

Rogers believed that all children (and adults) get sad, mad, lonely, anxious and frustrated — and he used television to model what to do with these difficult and often strong emotions. He wanted to counter the harmful message kids typically receive, some version of the ever-unhelpful you shouldn’t feel that way. 

In one episode, when he couldn’t get a flashlight to work, Mister Rogers expressed frustration in front of the camera: He admitted feeling disappointed at the fact that the trick that he had wanted to show his viewers didn’t work. In doing so, he validated his disappointment and showed his audience that talking about it helps. One of Rogers’ core beliefs was “what’s mentionable is manageable,” and he considered an urgent lesson for kids to learn to name their pain. Rogers believed that if children were encouraged to talk about feelings instead of being shamed for them, they could get to work finding appropriate outlets. One of Rogers’ recurrent lessons was on anger. Inspired by a child who asked him a question about anger, he wrote a song about it: 

What do you do with the mad that you feel 

When you feel so mad you could bite? 

When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong … 

And nothing you do seems very right? 

This song was Rogers’ way of teaching kids how to be angry, instead of how not to be angry. The first step is for the child to recognize their own anger as well as their temptation to bite, hit, kick. The second step the song suggests is to find appropriate outlets for that anger: 

What do you do? Do you punch a bag? 

Do you pound some clay or some dough? 

Do you round up friends for a game of tag? 

Or see how fast you go? 

Playing the piano as a child, Rogers wrote, taught him to express the whole range of his feelings. He recounts banging on the low keys when he got mad, and I imagine him exploring the minor keys when he felt sad. In multiple episodes, Rogers showed viewers how to tell their feelings through the piano. When he had famous musicians like Yo-Yo Ma or Winston Marsalis on the program, Rogers would ask whether they played differently when they were sad or angry. They always reported that yes, they did, and that playing their darker emotions helped. 

“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was purportedly a show for children. But I think Rogers also meant it for adults. We’d be better off if we’d stop negating children’s dark emotions with stifling commands like “don’t cry,” “calm down,” “be quiet.” If we are convinced by Rogers’ and Aristotle’s claim that feelings are not wrong and that “what’s mentionable is manageable,” then we should begin mentioning our own sad, lonely and disappointed feelings. In doing so, we would show children — and our grown-up selves — how to appropriately manage them. 

Can Religion be credible in a secular community

Liber contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem

by
Thomas Aquinas

translated by
John Procter, O.P.
in
AN APOLOGY FOR THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS
London: Sands & Co., 1902

Lo, your enemies have made a noise: and those who hate you have lifted up the head. They have taken malicious counsel against your people, and have consulted against your Saints. They have said: “Come, and let us destroy them, so that they be not a nation; and let the name of Israel be remembered no more” (Ps. lxxxii.).

CHAPTER 2
Can A Religion Lawfully Belong to A College of Secular Teachers?

THOSE who are hostile to religious make a malicious effort to prove that they ought not, in anything pertaining to study, to have dealings with seculars. Their object in thus acting, is to place obstacles in the path of such religious as are employed in teaching, if they cannot entirely hinder them in the exercise of that function. They adduce several authorities in support of their principles. 

1. First they quote the following words of xvii, cap. vii, In nova actione: “Those engaged in the same work, ought not to differ in profession. This was forbidden by the law of Moses, “You shall not plough with an ox and an ass together” (Deut. xxii), which means “You shall not associate in one office men of different professions.” The reason given is, “they whose aims and, desires are dissimilar, cannot unite nor coalesce.” Since then laymen and religious differ in profession, they ought not to be joined in the teaching office. 

2. Again, St. Augustine says, that every man ought to adhere to such a manner of life as befits him. Now it does not appear seemly, that the same man should, belong at one and the same time to a secular and to a religious establishment. For, the members of one institute cannot imitate the usages of the other. Hence a religious, belonging to his own community, should not be a member of a secular college. 

3. Again, a legal statute has ruled that, without a dispensation, the same man shall not belong to two lay associations. Much less then ought a religious, belonging to his own community, to be a member of a secular establishment. 

4. Again, all who belong to any society are bound to obey its rules. Now religious cannot conform to regulations drawn up for lay professors and scholars; nor can they promise to abide by those ordinances which laymen bind themselves to observe; nor to take the oaths which seculars take, for religious are not their own masters, but live under authority. Hence they cannot belong to secular societies. 

5. But, the malicious enemies of religious, in their desire to exclude them from any intercourse with seculars, strive, in default of legitimate arguments, to accomplish their purpose by calumny. They maintain that religious are a source of offence and scandal to the world; and they exhort their fellows to avoid all communion with them. They quote the words of St. Paul (Rom. xvi. 17), “Now I beseech you, brethren, to, mark them who cause dissensions and offences, contrary to the doctrine which you have learned, and to avoid them.” 

6. Religious are accused of living in, idleness. Therefore, according to the words of St. Paul (2 Thes. iii. 6) they ought to be shunned by good men. For, the Apostle says: “We charge you, brethren, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother walking disorderly, and not according to the tradition which they have received of us.” St. Paul goes on to speak of the manual labour practised by the Apostles. He then continues, “For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us.” He concludes his exhortation by the following command: “If any man obey not our word,” (i.e. our injunction to manual labour), “by this epistle, note that man; and do not keep company with him, that he may be ashamed.” 

7. Religious are further denounced by their enemies as being the source of all the evils which are to flood the world in the latter days. Hence they must be shunned by all men. For, St. Paul, writing to Timothy, (2 Tim. iii), gives a most emphatic order on this head. “Know,” he says, that in the last days there shall come dangerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, etc., having an appearance indeed, of goodness (or of religion, as the Gloss says), but denying the power thereof. Now these avoid.” But, as in the same chapter St. Paul says, “Evil men and seducers shall grow worse and worse, erring and driving into error,” 

8. so these defamers of religious, not satisfied with calumny, try to make void the authority of the Apostle, saying that, not even at his bidding, are they bound to admit religious to their society. For, according to civil law, there is no obligation which can compel them to permit religious to associate with them, since society is established on the basis of free will. 

9. Hence the Apostolic authority is limited to ecclesiastical affairs. St. Paul himself said (2 Cor. x. 13), “We will not glory beyond our measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God has measured to us.” 

10. Now ecclesiastical affairs include the collation of benefices, the administration of the Sacraments, and the like, but not association in studies. Hence secular students are not, by Apostolic authority, bound to admit, religious to their society. 

11. Again, power is committed to the ministers of the church, not “unto destruction, but unto edification” (2, Cor. xiii. 10). Hence as the enemies of religious consider that they have proofs that union between religious and seculars would be “unto destruction,” they hold, that the authority of the Apostles cannot compel them to form such an union. 

Body. This opinion, however, is censurable, mistaken and ill-founded. It deserves censure inasmuch as it detracts from that unity in the Church which, as St. Paul says (Rom. xii. 5), is based on the fact that “We, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” The Gloss interprets these words as meaning, that “we are members one of another, since we are of service to each other, and are in need of the assistance of one another.” This is true of all men alike; neither the greater, nor the lesser amongst us being excluded. Hence whosoever hinders one man from serving another, as far as he be able, impairs the unity of the Church. Now the work of teaching is one adapted to religious. St. Paul mentions this, saying, “he who teaches in doctrine.” Thereby the apostle means, says the Gloss, “He who has the gift of teaching, should, by his instruction, prove himself a member of another.” Hence it is a violation of ecclesiastical unity to hinder religious either from teaching others or from learning from them. It is likewise an infraction of charity. For, as Aristotle says (Ethics viii. and x.), “friendship is based on intercourse and by it is fostered.” These words are borne out by the saying of Solomon, “A man amiable in society, shall be more friendly than a brother” (Prov. xviii. 24). Anyone, therefore, who hinders intercourse, in scholastic matters between laymen and religious weakens charity and sows the seed of quarrels and dissensions. 

Again, obstacles thrown in the way of such intercourse, will tend to impede the progress made by students. In all social matters, the companionship of others is of great advantage. “A brother that is helped by his brother is like a strong city” says Solomon (Prov. xviii. 19). “It is better, therefore, that two should be together than one: for they have the advantage of their society” (Eccles. iv. 9). But in acquiring knowledge, that society is especially of use; for among many students some will know or understand that, of which others are ignorant. Hence Aristotle (I Caeli et Mundi) says “that the ancient philosophers, at divers meetings, investigated the truth concerning the heavenly bodies.” The exclusion then any class of men from the society of other students is a manifest injury to the studies of all. This applies, especially, to the exclusion of religious, who are peculiarly well adapted to make progress in learning, since, by their state of life, they are not distracted by worldly anxieties. “He who is less in action, shall receive wisdom” (Eccles. xxxviii. 25). 

By excluding religious from studying in common with laymen, an injury is committed against the community of faith, which is called Catholic because it ought to be one. Those who do not associate with each other by agreeing on religious matters, may easily end by teaching different, and even contradictory doctrines. St Paul says of himself (Gal. ii, 1), “Then, after fourteen years, I went up I again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me. And I went up according to revelation, and communicated with them the Gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but apart to them who seemed to be something: lest perhaps I should run, or had run, in vain.” We learn from the Decretals (distinct. XV. cap. canones), that Councils began to be convoked in the time of Constantine. Before that period, there was, on account of frequent and violent persecutions, very little facility for the instruction of the faithful; and, as bishops had no opportunity for meeting to debate together, the Christian religion was torn by many heresies. This fact proves, that there is great danger of schism in matters of doctrine, when the preachers of the faith are not able to assemble for purposes of discussion. Hence any attempt to exclude religious from intercourse with other teachers and students is highly to be condemned. 

The reason given for such an exclusion, is likewise ill-founded, being opposed to Apostolic doctrine which cannot err. St, Peter (1 Pet. iv. 10), writes in these terms: “As every man has received grace, minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” The Gloss thus comments on this passage: “The Apostle signifies by the word “grace” any gift of the Holy Spirit which may be used for the assistance of others, in things either temporal or spiritual. He exemplifies his meaning by the words which follow. “If any man speak, let him speak as the words of God.” The Gloss adds, “If any man knows how to speak, let him attribute his knowledge not to himself, but to God.” Let him stand in fear, lest he teach anything contrary to the will of God, the authority of Scripture, or the good of his brethren; or, lest he be silent, when he ought to speak.” Hence the assertion that Religious and laymen ought not mutually to communicate their gift of knowledge is patently, opposed to the teaching of the Apostles. 

Again, we read in Ecclesiast. xxxiii. 18, “See that I have not laboured for myself only, but for all that seek discipline.” These words, as the Gloss observes, apply to the teachers of the Church, who, by their writings and instruction, profit not themselves alone, but others also. The wise man, in the text that we have quoted, says, that he has laboured for all men, without exception. Therefore, both religious and secular teachers, ought, by their teaching, to labour for the benefit of all their brethren, whether laymen or religious. 

As the body is composed of several members, so in the Church there exist divers offices. This comparison we find in the first Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (xii.). Now as in the physical body there are eyes, so in the mystical body of the Church there are teachers. Hence the Gloss understands the text in the Gospel of St. Matthew (xviii. 9): “If your eye scandalises you” etc., to refer to ecclesiastical doctors and counsellors. Physical eyesight is useful to the whole body alike, and one limb subserves another in its functions. For, as St. Paul says (1 Cor. xii. 21), “the eye cannot say to the hand: I need not your help; nor again the head to the feet: I have no need of you.” Therefore, everyone who undertakes the office of teaching must perform it for the benefit of all men, of whatsoever condition they may be. Thus religious must assist laymen; and laymen must help religious. 

Again, any person who is competent to perform some special function has a right to be admitted to the society of those who are selected for the exercise of that function. For, an association means the union of men, gathered together for the accomplishment of some specific work. Thus, all soldiers have a right to associate with one another in the same army; for an army is nothing but a society of men, banded together for the purpose of fighting. Hence religious of a military order do not exclude from their society secular soldiers, and vice versa. Now an association of study is a society established with the object of teaching and of learning; and as not only laymen, but also religious, have a right to teach and to learn, there can be no doubt that both these classes may lawfully unite in one society. 

The objection made to intercourse between seculars and religious, on matters bearing on study and teaching, are altogether frivolous. They are based on wholly untenable grounds; and they only serve to show the ignorance of their authors. For, as we have already said, a society means a union of men, assembled together for one and the same purpose. Hence as everything ought to be judged with regard to the end for which it is ordained, the different societies which exist ought to be distinguished and judged according to the purpose for which they are formed. Aristotle, (VIII Ethics) classifies different “communications”. By this term he means associations formed for divers objects, wherein the members hold communication one with the other. The Philosopher distinguishes friendships according to these communications. He refers to the friendship of those brought up together, or that based on commercial transactions, or the friendship of men engaged in the same business, Hence arises the distinction between public and private societies. A public society is that wherein men assemble for purposes connected with the commonweal. Thus fellow citizens or compatriots form a public society and become one city or one kingdom. A private society is one established by a few persons for some private end. Thus two or three enter into partnership in a mercantile negotiation. Now each of these classes of society may be either temporary or perpetual. Sometimes a number of men, or only two or three individuals, band together in a perpetual society. This, is the case with those, who, when they become citizens of some city, form an association, choosing that city for their dwelling-place for ever. They thus establish a political society. Again, there may be a perpetual private society, formed between husband and wife, or master and slave, based upon the durable nature of the tie binding together the members of such a society. This is called an economical society. But, when men associate in order to engage in some temporary business, as, for example, to hold a fair, they form a temporary and public society. Or, when two friends are engaged in the management of the same inn, the society which they establish is private, and at at the same time temporary. 

Now these various classes of association, must be judged by different standards. To apply the name of association or society indiscriminately to all is to prove one’s own ignorance. 

For this, reason, we shall have no difficulty in answering the objections brought at the association of seculars and religious. 

Ad 1. We are told, first of all, that “men of different professions ought not to be associated in the same offices.” Then words are quoted, “you shall not join together men of different professions.” This objection is perfectly true if it be understood to mean that men of different professions should not be associated in matters upon which they differ. Hence laymen and clerics should not be associated in ecclesiastical matters. Therefore the following words are found before the words just quoted: “A bishop ought not to have a lay vicar; and the clergy ought not to be judged in lay courts of justice.” For the same reason, religious cannot associate with laymen in commercial and mercantile transactions, in which religious are forbidden to take part. “No man being a soldier of God entangles himself with secular businesses” (2 Tim. ii. 4). But, as we have seen, the exercise of teaching and of learning concerns both seculars and religious. Hence there is no reason against religious being associated with laymen in scholastic, affairs. For, men of different conditions, who, agree in unity of faith, form the body of the Church. “There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. iii. 28). 

Ad 2. It is objected that, although in an association of laymen and religious there are some points common, to both classes there are likewise some on which they differ. Thus, there may be a purely secular society, formed of members whose interests are limited to secular affairs. Or, there may be an exclusively religious institute, of which the system is directed towards the formation of the religious life. There is, however, one, point which is common both to laymen sad to religious. For, religious and seculars have this in common, viz., that. they belong to the society of the one Church of Christ, by that agreement in one faith whereby the unity of the Church is made perfect. Hence as teaching and learning are functions pertaining alike to seculars and religious, an association of study ought not to be known as exclusively either a lay or a religious college; but, rather, as a college including both seculars and religious. 

Ad 3. The objection that no one can belong to two associations is, for three reasons, untenable. First, because a part cannot be numerically accounted as opposed to the whole. A private society is part of a public society, as a house is part of a city. The fact that a man forms part of a family causes him to form part of a city, which is composed of many families. Nevertheless, he does not, on this account, belong to two distinct associations. Now as an association of studies is a public association, a man who forms part of a private society (be it secular or religious), wherein a few students meet together for the purposes of study, belongs on this very account to a general scholastic association. But he does not, for this reason, belong to two associations. Again, there is no law to prohibit a man from belonging to some public, perpetual association, and at the same time from forming part of a public or private temporary society. Thus, a man who belongs to some civic society may likewise form part of a military association; and the member of a family, may be associated with others in an inn. Now an institute of studies is a temporary, not a perpetual, association. For men attend it, not as a permanent residence, but they go and come at their own convenience. Hence there is no reason why a man belonging to a perpetual society, such as a religious, order, should not also attend a scholastic establishment. The third reason which stultifies the objection to the admission of religious to secular colleges is that this objection applies the particular to the general. The assertion, that a man cannot, belong to two associations was originally formulated about ecclesiastical societies. Thus, a man cannot be a canon in two churches, without a dispensation or a legitimate reason. We read (XXI quaest. I), “From this date, no cleric shall be attached to two churches.” But this rule does not apply to other associations. For, the same man can be a citizen of two cities. Therefore, as a scholastic association is not an ecclesiastical society, there is no reason why a man belonging to a religious or secular association, should not also be a member of a scholastic society. 

Ad 4. The fourth reason given for the exclusion of religious from association with secular students is that religious cannot either teach or study without the authorisation and permission of their superiors, who have the power to absolve their subjects from their oaths and other engagements in order to enable them to belong to such an association. Now we must remember that, as the perfection of a whole consists in the union of its parts, a whole cannot exist unless its parts agree. Hence any decrees drawn up for the welfare of a state and city ought to be formulated with a view to the advantage of all its members. Any statutes which would hinder the unity of a commonwealth ought to be abolished. For laws are established in order to preserve the concord of a state and not to promote internal dissension. In the same way, there ought not to exist in any scholastic association statutes which do not suit all students alike. 

Ad 5. The words of the Apostle, (Rom. xvi. 17), “Now I beseech you, brethren,” etc., quoted by our opponents in support of their objections, are no argument on their side. First because the words of St. Paul do not apply to religious, but to heretics, and to schismatics. This is clearly shown in the text, wherein St. Paul warns the Romans to avoid such as cause dissensions “contrary to the doctrine which they had learned,” learned that is, as the Gloss explains, “from the true Apostles.” Those against whom St. Paul gave this warning, were men who strove to impose the Jewish law upon the Gentiles. 

Ad 6. Again the words (2 Thes. iii. 6), “We charge you, brethren,” etc., were not uttered against religious, but against men who passed their time in idleness and misdeeds. Of these St. Paul says, “we have heard there are some among you who walk disorderly, working not at all, but curiously meddling,” or as, the Gloss says, “providing for their necessities by iniquitous means.” 

Ad 7. Again the words (2 Tim. iii. 1), “Know also this,” etc., were written not to religious, but to heretics, “blasphemers” as St. Paul calls them, “who by their heresy blaspheme God” (Gloss). “As Jannes and Manbres resisted Moses so these also (i.e. heretics) resist the truth,” continues the Apostle, “ men corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the faith.” It is true that he says, that the heretics of whom he speaks, had an appearance indeed of godliness,” i.e., of religion; but religion in this passage signifies latria, which makes a profession of faith. In this sense, it is, as St. Augustine says, (X De civitate Dei), equivalent to piety. But even granted that all or some religious were as infamous as certain men consider them to be, that would be ho reason for excluding them from intercourse with others. The Gloss, referring to the passage of St. Paul (1 Cor. v.,), concerning the man guilty of. incest, wherein he bids the Corinthians not so much as to eat with such an one, observes that, “the Apostle’s words, ‘if anyone that is named a brother,’ show that men are not to condemn each other rashly and carelessly, but that it is only after judgment has been pronounced that any sinner is to be excluded from communion with the Church. If such a sinner cannot be judicially excommunicated, he must be tolerated.” We have no right to exclude any man from the society of his fellows, unless he be, by his own confession, found guilty of some crime, or be denounced and convicted by some secular or ecclesiastical tribunal. Hence a man may not be condemned on suspicion, or by someone usurping the office of judge. He must be tried, accused and convicted according to the law of God, interpreted by the Church. Hence even were religious as reprobate as they are said to be, they ought not to be excluded from intercourse with the laity, unless they have been brought to judgment, and have been condemned. 

Ad 8. The attempt to derogate from the authority of the Apostles, is not only based on false premises, but is closely akin to heresy. For we find in the Decretals (dist. XXII. cap. Omnes) the following passage: “Whoever endeavours to wrest from the Roman Church the privilege bequeathed to her by the supreme head of all the churches is undoubtedly guilty of heresy.” And again, “ He acts contrary to faith, who acts against her who is the Mother of the Faith.” Now Christ granted to the Roman Church the privilege of being obeyed by all, as He Himself is obeyed, in order, as says St. Cyril, bishop of Alexandria (II Thesaurorum), “that we may continue to be members under our Head, the Roman Pontiff, seated on the throne of the Apostles. From him must we learn what we are to believe and uphold. We are bound to revere him, and to entreat him for all things. To him alone does it belong to rebuke and to correct and to unloose, in the place of Him who has established him. To none other has this power been given, but to him alone, before whom all men do, by the divine command, abase their heads, and who is, by all the princes of the world, obeyed as if he were our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.” Hence it is clear that anyone who maintains that the Pope need not be obeyed is a heretic. 

Ad 9. The objection that, according to law, no one can be forced to join an association against his will, applies only to a private society, established by two or three members. But a man can be compelled to form part of a public association, which cannot exist without the consent of authority. Thus, a prince may force the inhabitants of a certain city to accept an individual as their fellow-citizen; and an ecclesiastical society can be compelled to accept a man as a canon, or a brother. Hence as any general scholastic association is, in a certain sense, a society, any man may be obliged, by the authority of a superior, to belong to it. 

Ad 10. The assertion that the Apostolic authority is limited to ecclesiastical affairs, is false. The president of a republic is bound to provide food for those over whom he rules, and to undertake the proper education and training of the young (X Ethic). He is likewise obliged to supervise the legislation of his republic, and to establish rules for the well-being of the citizens (I Ethic). Thus we see that the legislation concerning education is one of the duties of the president of a republic. It must, therefore, come under the authority of the Apostolic See, by which the whole Church is governed. 

Ad 11. The last objection is founded on an absolute falsehood. The association of religious with the laity in matters concerning education is not intended for the destruction, but rather for the advancement, of learning. Hence there can be no possible doubt that, by the authority of the Apostolic See, seculars may be compelled to admit religious into their scholastic societies.

Bauhaus: A Failed Utopia? (3)

Bauhaus: A Failed Utopia? (3)

Part 3: Last Rites

MORGAN MEIS |The EASEL

This is the last of a three-essay exploration of the history of The Bauhaus in light of the 100 year anniversary of its founding. Previous essays can be found here and here.

In the late 1950s, Marcel Breuer took on a commission to design a church in Minnesota. He was working with the engineer Pier Luigi Nervi. The result of Breuer and Nevi’s efforts is one of the most terrifying structures ever built.

Breuer, born in Hungary, was a charter member of the Bauhaus school. He started as one of the very first students at the school in Weimar. He became a star pupil under the tutelage of Walter Gropius, who made Breuer head of the carpentry shop while he was still a student. Breuer later taught at the Dessau campus. Sometime in 1925 or ‘26, he designed the hugely iconic Wassily chair (known initially as the Model B3 chair, then later renamed after Wassily Kandinsky), a design that came to be almost synonymous with the Bauhaus look, for obvious reasons.

I say ‘obvious reasons’ because the Wassily chair, with its tubular metal construction and sparse look, has all the embrace of domesticated industrial design that so characterized the first decades of Bauhaus. And the damn thing works, somehow. That’s to say, it preserves a sense of comfort and an attention to the human body even in its radical minimalism. If you’ve ever sat in a Wassily Chair, or any half-decent knock-off, you probably enjoyed the experience. There is something playful, something light in the design. The simple twists in the metal tubes make it fun. ‘Fun’ in a startling and challenging way, but fun all the same. This sense of edgy playfulness is captured nicely in the famous photograph of a woman (perhaps Ise Gropius) sitting in a Wassily chair and wearing one of Oskar Schlemmer’s masks.

But looking again at the church in Minnesota that Breuer designed thirty years after the Wassily chair, the words ‘fun’ or ‘playfulness’ do not leap to the lips. Much more apt is the term ‘Brutalism’. This is, indeed, the term that came to be used for much of the monumental international architecture of the late 50s and early 60s. The term ‘Brutalism’ applies to the proposition that whatever challenges a particular building poses, that challenge can be met with concrete.

With respect to concrete, Breuer’s church is quite an interesting experiment. Making an office or apartment complex wholly out of concrete is one thing. But using concrete to make a church strains the limits of what we think of when we think of a church or, for that matter, concrete. Even the most imposing of Europe’s great old cathedrals, with their massive stones and looming towers, are fundamentally committed to decoration, adornment, to creating organic forms out of the blocks of stone. Not so with Breuer’s bell tower. It is a sheet of concrete that pretends to be nothing else. It looks more or less like a giant sidewalk lifted up and placed horizontally across the sky.

And this, to me, is the most interesting aspect of the Bauhaus legacy. Breuer, unlike many of the other students of the early Bauhaus, continued to push at the outer limits of the Bauhaus idea, which was to embrace, and potentially humanize, the new materials and techniques of the industrial revolution. Breuer’s radicalism was necessary since the early efforts by Gropius and others to maintain a balance between craft and industry did not work. Bauhaus lost its way. It was run over by the relentless push for low cost, high efficiency office accomodation. In the aftermath of this failure and attendant crisis of identity, Bauhaus architects and designers created plenty of uninteresting glass and concrete boxes, plenty of designs for kitchen items and furniture that are simply ugly and utilitarian. One branch of Bauhaus lands us at IKEA, which, for all its brilliance as a brand, is simply a watered-down, suburbanized version of the Bauhaus ideal transformed into mass consumer items palatable to all – or perhaps, more accurately, not immediately offensive to anyone.

Marcel Breuer, however, represents another path. Over time, the Breuer wing of Bauhaus got weird and dark. Breuer and other Brutalists made buildings that have the capacity to shake your soul. The stunning aspect of Breuer’s church in Minnesota is that the concrete is so very concrete, so gray, so massive, so unforgiving. It is like a monument to a new and strange God. Confronting Breuer’s church, a person must radically question previous assumptions about what is sacred, beautiful, organic. That’s to say, with Breuer’s wing of the Bauhaus we’re confronted with the proposition that half measures do not ever amount to a full truth. We’re confronted with the proposition that only by concrete fully being concrete will we learn anything about the world within which we actually live, a world of industrial materials and synthetic objects through and through. At the root of many of the buildings Breuer built in the 60s and 70s seems to be the following thought, “don’t fight alienation by resisting it, fight it by going through to the other side.”

There’s a wonderful movie that came out in 2017. It’s called Columbus and was directed by a mysterious man who goes by the name Kogonada. Kogonada was previously known for making thoughtful video essays (which can be seen on YouTube) about various directors and cinematographers and camera techniques throughout film history. Kogonada is, in fact, a fascinating enough subject to warrant a separate discussion the likes of which we don’t have the time or space for here. The interest (for us) of Columbus is that the film takes place in Columbus, Indiana, a small, otherwise-unremarkable town except for the fact that a number of important Modernist architects (Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, etc.) were commissioned to create dozens of austere monuments to glass and steel and straight lines, from fire stations to elementary schools. The entire town is a secret mecca for super-ambitious High Modern architecture.

But here’s the other thing about the film. It is a film about real people with real problems. It is a film about love and betrayal and desire and disappointment. It is a film about the messiness of human lives in the face of trauma and tragedy. The lives of the characters in Columbus have none of the calm, imposing simplicity of the monuments to Modernist architecture that dominate their town and appear throughout the film.

The genius of the film is to show how the drama of real, complicated human lives is not cancelled out by the formal austerity of the architecture. Something more like the opposite occurs. The formal simplicity of the architectural spaces reveals an openness and generosity. They encourage and allow for the drama and chaos of human life to emerge within, precisely because they are spaces that have not predetermined how a person should think or feel. They are places of a kind of radical clearing, a clearing in which a person is encouraged to ask deep questions: Who am I, really? What do I want? What do I need from others? Of what am I most afraid?

From this, perhaps, we can extract a principle, or at least a rule of thumb. Modernist architecture and design is not meant to be considered in the abstract, for all its abstraction. It is meant to be experienced. And in the experience, surprising things can happen.

In truth, I have no idea what would happen to me inside Marcel Breuer’s great concrete church in Minnesota. I don’t know because I’ve never been inside it, I’ve never sat in the pews. I know about its startling strangeness only from photographs. I did, however, recently visit another church that Breuer built, in Norton Shores, just outside of Muskegon on the western shore of Lake Michigan. The church, opened in the mid-1960s, was constructed according to similar ideas as those that governed the construction of the church in Minnesota. Concrete is the dominant material. When you drive up to the church, making your way through a quiet suburban neighborhood, it is as if you’ve suddenly come upon a government installation for warehousing chemical weapons, or perhaps a bunker left over from paranoid days during WWII when Michiganders dreamed that German U-boats might creep into the waters of the Great Lakes. The concrete cross on the giant, imposing frontal wall is of little comfort and serves, rather, as a kind of warning. Is this some tomb to a long-forgotten tyrant of the Upper Midwest?

And yet, to enter the sanctuary of that church is to enter into a space of awe, the kind of awe that is intimately connected with the religious, the Divine. The space was designed to be vertiginous. Literally, it makes you dizzy. A monumental wall of concrete beams rises up from behind the altar and seems to teeter toward the sanctuary. The concrete beams do not remain stationary as you move about the church. They lean to the left as you move right and vice versa. These are all optical effects, of course. The building is not really leaning and looming. It is not shifting in space and threatening to topple over. It is made of tens of thousands of tons of poured concrete. It is the heaviest building in the world, sunk down into the earth with the weight of a mountain. But the curve of the side walls and the extreme nature of the angles creates a feeling of almost constant, low-level vertigo. This sounds unpleasant. In a sense, it is. But it is also powerful, moving, profound. This is a place in which to confront the central questions: What is God? What does it all mean? This is a place that has truly separated itself from everyday experience, which is, by definition, the nature and purpose of the sacred.

I walked into that church expecting to discover a space that brutally, even cruelly, asserts the incompatibility between Modernity and tradition, between the secularity of contemporary life and the possibility of sacred space. What I found, instead, was a place that had rediscovered, at the extreme end of the weirdest corner of High Modernism, what it means for a church to be a church. And let us be honest. Most churches constructed in the last couple of hundred years have no idea what a church is supposed to look like. So, we get Neo-Gothic and Neo-Medieval. We get churches that look like movie theaters or community centers or, stranger still, a mall. We get cutesy attempts at folksy buildings and all of them, in one way or another, cater primarily to the comfort and coziness of the congregation, as if going to church is supposed to be roughly the same experience as sitting in your living room watching television.

Yet with Breuer’s insane tribute to the power of concrete, we get a church that produces a genuine sense of the awesomeness, the confusion, the fear and the joy by which we confront the idea that there is a world at all, a cosmos, a self. The great mystery beating at the heart of creation. What is it? Who knows? It can’t be known. And yet, there it is.

Who would have thought that the great triumph of the Bauhaus would be to teach us, after so many years, what a church is? Who would have thought that the final steps of Bauhaus inspired architecture would be about worship? That was the last thing I expected to discover in Norton Shores, Michigan. But that is what I found, something ancient and strange at the furthest reaches of concrete.