The Discovery of A Muslim Convert

The controversial Italian journalist Magdi Allam, born in Egypt and raised a Muslim (though he remained one only nominally), was baptized into the Catholic Church by Pope Benedict XVI this past Easter Vigil (‘08) (see story here:http://www.zenit.org/rssenglish-22151). One of the motives Mr. Allam gives for his conversion was his being led to understand, by the help of Benedict XVI, “the indissoluble link between faith and reason as a basis for authentic religion and human civilization”. However, such a statement might leave some people scratching their heads. A “link between faith and reason”? Isn’t that like saying a link between a circle and a triangle? Since the definition of one excludes the other, there can be no “link.” Similarly, if faith means fancy or blind speculation, and reason equals empirical science, then a “link” between the two is just as unintelligible. “If”, however, is the operative word.

Here in the United States, one can sense a wearisome reaction to the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation; the fact is it depends in what sense the claim is made. Many of our Founders (like Jefferson and Franklin) and men of influence (like Paine) were actually deists; Washington was a Mason. But despite such differences, all the great men of the Revolutionary period were the beneficiaries of a philosophical succession reaching back through the scholastics of the Middle Ages to the Greeks of Antiquity. Indeed, they inherited an intellectual universe governed by first principles, which was vast enough to anchor all sorts of grand edifices (like the flowering of sciences, objective morality, the existence of God, the immortality of man, and the nature of revelation -- to name but a handful), and dynamic enough to unite and animate men in causes like declaring independence from a tyrannical king and establishing an unparalleled Constitutional Republic.

I think it accurate to call the view of reality, which our Founding Fathers inherited, a classical western view (one can become sufficiently acquainted with this view by following the ten-year reading plan outlined by Mortimer Adler in the first volume of The Great Books of Western Civilization, or at least by exploring the “Great Ideas” composing volumes 2+3 (Check your local library)). I think it also safe to say that an acquaintance with the classical western view will reveal, at its heart, a very definite philosophy, even, to borrow from Agostino Steuco, a perennial philosophy. An example of the importance of this philosophy lies in one of its core tenets: that “Man [is] a rational animal”. It is from this tenet that freedom’s indispensable proposition, the equality of man, derives. Consequently, it is from this tenet, and the worldview that supports it, that the political implications of man’s equality are born into action. Abraham Lincoln wrote, “The assertion that ‘all men are created equal’ was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration not for that but for its future use.” It’s “future use,” of course, manifested, slowly but surely, to the inclusion of blacks, women and non-land owners.

Unfortunately, however, the divide between the present and the intellectual and moral foundations of our past appears to be growing at an alarming rate. Prominent atheist professors lecture on the “abuse” of raising children in a religious atmosphere, Anglican bishops urge Sharia Law in Britain, courts challenge the inclusion of “God” in the pledge of allegiance, and the State censors long-standing Boy Scout policies and cuts funding to Catholic adoption agencies “on principle” – the list goes on and on. And what should we make of the list itself? The list, I’d submit, is nothing but a growing litany of consequences stemming from a largely polarized society. If I may take some liberty with a well-known physics axiom and apply it to the universe of these polarized worldviews, it would seem that every over-reaction has an equal and opposite over-reaction; thus, for instance, a Mr. Dawkins stands in relation to, say, an Archbishop Williams. These polarizing over-reactions, which really have taken place on many levels, have denuded words like faith and reason of their traditional meanings and relations (one need only read St. Thomas Aquinas to find that a link between the two is not an inherent contradiction).

In the mean time, many fair minded exiles wander aimlessly, feeling a disconnect from an animating, comprehensive, lost view of reality, and searching for some type of via media, some type of middle ground upon which to stand and by which to make sense of all the polarized madness. The convert Magdi Allam, in so many words, claims that he has found this lost view as an integral part of his religion; and, finding the same truth four years ago, I believe him. Still, though he and I, as Catholics, believe that the “gates of hell shall not [ultimately] prevail”; even so, “eternal vigilance…” says Andrew Jackson, “is the price of liberty,” and, if strategies from the Communist Manifesto are sure threats to our liberty, then a widespread break with our formative past -- whether through ignorance, apathy, or design -- must invariably pose a threat, in the words of our Preamble, “to ourselves and our posterity.”