- [Introducer] Good afternoon.
I'm happy to introduce Father Gerry Whelan
from the Gregorian University in Rome.
He actually is from Dublin,
but he teaches in Rome.
He had spent many years
in Africa, in Kenya
as a pastor there and working
in Africa for 14 years.
So we're very happy to have him come today
and to speak about nonviolent peacemaking.
I've known Father Gerry for a long time.
We met at the Woodstock Theological Center
in Washington D.c.
We were both worked on the work
of Father Bernard Lonergan.
And one of the thoughts
I had about Father Gerry,
I remember he once talked about a course
that he took at Boston University.
And the teacher was
talking about something
to do with understanding
and as he was listening
he said to himself, "He
doesn't have it right."
And it was a moment he remembered
and he talked about it later.
And if you know anything
about Abraham Maslow
he says we have these peak experiences
that we remember and that form us,
and I've come to the conclusion
that a lot of university education
is having these special
moments of insight.
I can remember being in
Father Hollywell's class
here at Seton Hall University
and hearing him quote Saint Augustine.
"You have made us for yourself, oh Lord.
And our hearts are restless
until they rest in thee."
And that was the peak experience.
I still remember that class
that I had here at Seton Hall University.
So a lot of what Father
Lonergan talks about,
Father Whelan will be talking about today
or remembering those
special moments that form us
and form our lives.
And make us who we are and
make us who we come to be.
So I'm happy to introduce Father Whelan
but I'm going to ask the Dean
of the School of Diplomacy
to actually do the real introduction.
And talk about a conference
that will be coming up in
October on peace making.
So I'm happy to introduce
Professor Dean Andrea Bartoli
from the School of Diplomacy.
(applauding)
- It's beautiful to be here.
And it's beautiful to say a few words
before Professor Whelan,
Father Whelan, will speak.
Monseigneur Liddy facilitated
many conversations,
many of us are here because
of those conversations.
And one of the last conversation
is inviting Father Whelan
to take on or at least address or engage
with a project that some of us
are exploring around majestarium paxus.
All popes after Leo 13
have been very consistently advocating
for peace in very difficult circumstances.
Millions of people were killed
in World War I, World War II.
In the war in Iraq, in Afghanistan.
But the Catholic popes
have been very consistent
in being against those wars.
And they were not against something,
they were for something.
They had an idea of how
law and order comes about
and why ordering in love
is actually a responsibility
of each of us.
Something we cannot
delegate to someone else.
So I suggested to Dick,
that in consideration
of Kathianne Thurston
availability of coming, the
Catholic nonviolent initiative
work that was done prior.
Seton Hall could embark
in a three year project
that will engage Pope Francis, Benedict,
and John Paul the Second in conversations
so that we can hear what
these popes have to say.
Not just as an exercise of learning
but also of encountering ourself.
And why we hear sometimes
and sometimes we don't.
In Scripture it is very very clear
that the Lord has a lot to
say about the human capacity
not to hear what is clearly stated.
And it's clearly a capacity
that we have in our own heart.
And the two examples
that Monseigneur Liddy
just shared are very interesting.
Because he was mentioning
one reaction of Father Whelan
to say "I don't think
that he's got it right."
And his reaction to Augustine
given by a professor.
Because one was an
assent, I agree with you.
Augustine is speaking about me,
I am restless unless until I am in God.
And the other one is, I am hearing
what this professor is saying so precisely
that I am actually questioning
what the professor is saying
and I think he's wrong.
He doesn't have it right.
So he's exercising a very
different form of listening.
But I think that this is the
beauty of the university.
Is that we encounter, continuously
this responsibility of thinking.
This responsibility of assenting.
This responsibility of
deciding, is this true or not?
Is this good or not?
Is this important or not?
Is this relevant or not?
And our decisions is actually
fundamental in considered it.
So I'm very delighted that
I am with you listening
to this nonviolent peace making lecture
that clearly comes from a long trajectory
in conversation with Bernard
Lonergan and Robert Doran.
And he invites us into a future
that must be more attentive in
listening and understanding.
I am delighted to be here.
Thankful to Monseigneur Liddy,
thankful to Father Whelan
and I give him the floor.
Thank you.
(applauding)
- Good evening, everybody.
It's a great honor to be here.
I've been to Seton Hall
a few times before.
My brother lived in Chatham until recently
and has moved his family down to Houston.
Father Liddy is correct in
saying we both studied Lonergan
but the fact is I studied
Monseigneur Liddy on Lonergan.
So when we met in
Woodstock in '95, I think.
I was thrilled to see that
Monseigneur Liddy was there
because I had used him a
great deal in my doctorate.
A biographical study of Lonergan
in a number of respects.
Also, Monseigneur Bartoli, I
have known and respected highly
from appearing at Lonergan
conferences first of all.
But also, I know the Sant'egidio
community a little bit
in Italy with which Professor
Bartoli is concerned.
And I lived for 14 year in Africa
and I knew the good work
the Sant'egidio community
had done in some remarkable peace making
in Mozambique and Sudan for example.
To hear that somebody was
making links to Lonergan
from that Sant'egidio experience
was very exciting for me.
So it's an honor to be here.
I will continue now with an introduction.
I've already heard about this.
I was delighted to be invited
into doing something propaedeutic
for this October conference
that will start the three year process
that Professor Bartoli is talking about.
So, a description of the
conference that stuck,
a sentence of the description
that stuck in my mind.
"Individuals need to embody
the vocation of peace in,"
oops, no, that's right.
"of peace in their personal lives
and the various communities
to which they belong."
So there's this kind of paradox.
You're talking about global affairs
not least, war and peace.
And you're talking about
your own interiority at the same time.
That's especially what
I note in that comment.
At the, I've already put on the title
that I want to make a contribution
explaining in general terms how Lonergan,
Lonergan's epistimological
and methodological thought
is relevant to this.
But others are working on that as well.
And I don't know if you've seen this book,
Professor Bartoli says
that he advertises it,
Transforming Conflict Through Insight,
Kenneth Melchin and Cheryl Picard.
So I'll arrive at that point
at a certain stage of my talk
so I highly recommend it,
it's terribly impressive.
It's a subgenre within Lonergan's studies
to engage with conflict resolution.
If there's a particular edition
I want to make in this talk.
It is to notice that a
fellow called Robert Doran,
who was actually my doctoral
director in Toronto.
A Jesuit of a younger
generation than Lonergan
from Wisconsin, adds something
to Lonergan in my opinion.
Even at a fundamental
epistimological level
that is relevant, all the
more so, for peace making.
That is a notion of psychic conversion.
As some of you who've studied
a bit of Lonergan perhaps
might have heard that
Lonergan speaks about
religious conversion, moral conversion,
intellectual conversion
and now Doran adds a notion
of psychic conversion
that I accept and I use.
And I want to talk a
little bit about that.
Now this is actually the email
that Monseigneur Liddy sent me.
I was all set to give a talk
on a much more easy topic
for me that I have given before.
And Monseigneur starts to constrain me
to try to feed into this process
that is already present in Seton Hall.
So let's just notice something
of his very perspicacious comments
on what I had been telling him
on what I've already
been studying these days
and how it connected to
this peace making topic.
The notion of psychic
conversion and symbols
as a way of getting concrete
conversions to peace making
even in universities where
there's a lot of fighting.
Anything Pope Francis has said
about this, question mark?
Using Lonergan's notion
of conversion in general
to illuminate peace making
on the personal and political level.
So it was Monseigneur Liddy
who really prompted me
to formulate my topic for this talk.
I have a book coming on
Pope Francis and Lonergan
and that is implicit in what
Monseigneur Liddy was saying.
But not really Pope Francis and Doran.
The book wasn't long enough
for me to get onto Doran.
So, in truth, I won't be
saying much about Pope Francis
at the question time you're most welcome.
There's all sorts of connections,
I'm very enthusiastic about these links.
But I understand a number
of students will be leaving
for another class at 5 p.m.
I expect to take about 35 more minutes.
So I'll do the talking
and I'll be staying around
for any length of questions
that people want.
We could get on to the Pope Francis link
perhaps at question time.
But not really in my main talk.
I hope you'll forgive me
if I talk quite a bit about myself now.
I can at least invoke Monseigneur Liddy
who does something similar.
If we're talking about interiority,
this sort of paradoxical link
between the individual
conversion of a person
and the significance for historical change
that that person and in
community can then be part of.
I think it's appropriate that
individuals do a little bit
of almost a Saint Augustine of
Hippo autobiography account.
The point is of course,
I'm making a point about
what is psychic conversion.
How it adds to what Lonergan talks about.
How it's relevant for
the redemption of history
as I'll talk a bit about more.
But if you'll permit me,
still in an introductory mode really
and talk about my own experience
and ultimately therefore
what psychic conversion
has meant in my life.
When I was your age,
you undergraduates here,
I was studying economics in
Trinity College in Dublin.
I was hanging onto my
Catholic faith more or less.
I knew I had to go to a
certain kind of youth mass
that was on a Sunday night
if I was going to hang onto my faith.
Because I found a lot of
other masses not helpful.
I was also able to acknowledge myself,
I was mostly lazy.
So tried to keep going.
After one of these masses
there was a talk from a lady
that I wouldn't usually listen to,
frankly, of a certain age,
who spoke about the
organization called Pax Christi.
Which is an organization
of active nonviolence.
I was very touched by it.
She talked about the nuclear cold war
and political lobbying
done by Pax Christi.
But mostly she talked about prayer
and how we have to be
individuals of peace,
reconciled with ourselves
and our own demons.
If we are ever to be able
to proceed in a peace making way.
And how you can be
proposing the right policy
but doing it in such a way
that you're almost contradicting yourself.
So there's a method of peace making
where the medium is the message.
She was saying that the,
you have to incarnate
in some way the kind of message of peace
that you're trying to communicate.
In specifics, in its social manifestation,
policy kind of manifestation.
So I was very touched by this.
I joined up.
I remember it cost me ten pounds
which didn't come easy at
those days, in the 70's.
So, the next step was
joining the Jesuits after,
noviceship
And I'm really grateful to the formation
that the Jesuits gave me.
I have ten more years
before they let me loose on anybody
as an ordained priest.
Two years of noviceship.
So the spiritual exercises,
the 30 day retreat
you've probably heard about.
Again there's this sense of
zeal for action in the world.
And caution about, am I
wise enough to do anything?
So there's a call to humility
and interior examination of motives.
As your very active in the world
and concerned for the poor,
concerned for society.
So again this paradox at
the, just on the humility.
See, I don't want to confess
all my sins in public
but the, I remember the,
there's a prayer called the kingdom,
Prayer of the Kingdom in
the spiritual exercises.
It's Luke 4.
You just imagine yourself
in the scene of Luke 4,
Jesus coming to Nazareth
saying I have come to bring
good news to the poor,
and liberty to captives,
sight to the blind.
And you're asked to ask, do you buy this?
Do you sign up for this project?
And I remember feeling an
enormous amount of zeal
that I did want to be a Jesuit
and commit myself to
this sort of a project.
Shortly afterwards, I'm imagining Jesus
in a different gospel scenes.
And I'm getting preaching and healing.
And I'm getting really annoyed
that everybody's paying
attention to him and not to me.
And I suddenly realized
that I don't like this,
this has never been my life up til now.
I have always been
seeking to do good things
with myself at the center
and myself getting praised
and thanked as a result.
So, it won't surprise you
that it was off to psychotherapy for me.
(laughing)
In fact, we couldn't all have been crazy
because all the novices did psychotherapy
in the second year of noviceship
and it was a remarkable experience
of staying in the spirit
of the spiritual exercises.
And in a sense, praying then more deeply
than we had even during the 30 days.
Again here is where I don't
want to confess all my sins
but confronting some behaviors
that it's not just it
was getting into trouble
with the novice master.
It was irritating the living daylights
out of my fellow novices.
There were certain patterns of behavior
that I had to acknowledge
were really not good.
And then with therapy,
passing the scary bridge
of recognizing that, look.
I had rationalizations
for what I had been doing
but my actual motives
for what I had been doing
were unknown to me.
So I had unconscious motivations,
I've already mentioned, for
example, seeking attention.
There were others.
I had behaviors being driven
more my unconscious motivations
than I had been acknowledging
up to that date.
I just don't know if any
of you have done therapy,
this is very important
to what I'm explaining
about psychic conversion.
The moment of fear that you can experience
when you suddenly realize
you're not as much in control
of your own actions as
you thought you were.
That I employ masking
narratives for my behavior.
That disguise some of the real motives.
And then exploring some of those motives
and recognizing hurts from the past.
That there are aspects of my
behavior that are inauthentic
and they come from a woundedness.
So I need somehow to visit the
sources of that woundedness.
So like the story has a
happy ending, so to speak.
But I want to emphasize the moment of fear
when you're in the middle
of just opening the window
to the fact that there's stuff
down there influencing me.
And if I've spotted one of my
motives that needs working on,
what more will there be?
What rock do I have for my self identity?
Here it was very helpful
for having done the spiritual exercises.
Because I had actually had
a very strong experience
of God's unconditional love.
So to take the risk in
prayer of saying look,
I let God's unconditional
love into this area
and of course it remains unconscious
to a considerable degree.
But I was praying in a more
real way in the second year
of the noviceship than I'd
ever done in my life before.
And it had to do with
this therapeutic insight
that there are realms of my motivation
that are unconscious to me
and are doing me no good.
So unconscious motivation to authenticity.
This just briefly anticipating
what I'll be saying
in a more explanatory
way later in the talk.
Unconscious motivation and
authentic self transcendence.
So, Bob Doran says that psychic conversion
is the process that I, more or less,
can understand from my
noviceship experience.
You know, we're all a bit hesitant to say
I'm completely religiously converted,
morally converted,
intellectually, psychically.
But I understood what he was saying
by saying that psychic
conversion involves finding ways
to help the unconscious cooperate
with my authentic self transcendence.
And then to notice two things about this.
I've only spoken so far about the way
that the unconscious can block
my authentic self transcendence.
But there's another area
which was central to the
spiritual exercises of Ignatius.
Discernment of spirits,
you've probably heard about.
How am I feeling in an active life?
I'm aware that I'm subject
to both the consolation
that comes from the Holy Spirit
and the desolation that comes
from the enemy of human nature.
And the real clincher for
discernment of spirits
it's towards decision making.
I would recognize that when
I'm in a state of consolation,
confirmed by my spiritual director.
I can make decisions
that are in keeping with the will of God.
Now we're not talking
about sinning, not sinning.
We're talking about the whole realm
of what am I going to do with my life?
Ignatius calls it the election.
So discernment of spirits, to start with
concerns election of a way of life.
I'm going to get married.
I'm going to be a doctor, a lawyer.
I'm going to join the Jesuits.
There's no saying, there's
no rules about that.
There's a whole area of, it's
kind of an aesthetic choice.
What just seems more beautiful
to me to make of myself?
My sister told me
about being proposed
marriage by her boyfriend.
Really not being sure,
knowing all his defects,
and she tells us all on a
regular basis what they are.
But having a dream in the night,
and waking up certain that he was the one.
And they've got eight
grandchildren now, the two of them.
So that was her, you know,
who's to say who you marry?
Who's to say what career you choose?
It's got something to
do with the unconscious.
It wells up in your affectivity.
It's this whole way in which
the unconscious can be freed
from being an obstacle to
your self transcendence.
To being a positive resource.
If you've heard of Rosemary Haughton,
a spirituality theology writer,
has written a book called
the, Passionateness of Being,
that Lonergan liked a great deal.
And I believe that that
notion of the passion,
the passionateness of
being is a reference really
to the way the unconscious
can be mobilized
as well as the conscious
aspects of self transcendence
to direct a life.
Okay, I'm going back then
to my academic trick.
So in a sense I've explained a little bit
of the essence in some
ways of what I'm trying
to do here today which
is psychic conversion
based on my personal account
and of course the point is to invite you
to think similar thoughts.
But I'm heading towards a
more technical explanation
of Lonergan's thought and Doran's thought
and its relevance for peace making now.
So as I went into academic formation
I was using my background in economics
I was very motivated to work for the poor
and to go to Africa, in fact,
where I did go for 14 years.
But this experience I'd had in formation
in the noviceship made me
just a little bit cautious
that not everything that
glitters is gold, so to speak.
Even in social justice ministry.
And I became a little bit cautious
about quite a few of my fellow Jesuits.
And I would hazard to say
in some of the general tone
of the way the society of Jesus was
in the 1970's and 1980's.
A certain immature step towards
how to link faith and
justice as they said.
There was something more to be
understood and embraced here.
This quite unkindly at
the way I put it myself
was coming out of the noviceship,
I'd see some Jesuits active
especially in the social justice ministry
and I'd say, they should
go back to the noviceship.
They should go back to my novice master.
I can see in them some
of the attention seeking
that I was involved in.
So a caution, is a discerning caution
about even work such
as unction for the poor
the most noble working for others.
So that's good old Karl
Marx theory you see.
I think implicitly, without meaning to,
there was a slipping into a
certain Marxist kind of thinking
for quite a lot of people that
wanted to transform society.
Conversely, these were the
years of Pope John Paul II
and the solidarity movement.
And the clarity that Pope John Paul had,
that Wojtyla had as a philosopher
about conflictual change
over against the Communists in Poland.
Always by peaceful methods.
So he had developed a whole
philosophy to support that.
It's why he was so quick-footed as Pope
to say yes to solidarity the
moment it had its first strike.
You know Leck Walesa of
the solidarity movement
before many of you were
born, I understand now.
But it was exciting at times for me.
Active nonviolence, a
different way to change
that is not Marxist and
clearly was not Marxist.
But it was in Poland, that
was opposing communism.
Now, there's a two semester course here
that I'm not really going
to really get in to.
But in my academic work I
became aware of continuity
with the Pax Christi
organization that I had known.
That there is a discipline
of active nonviolence
that is taught.
I don't know, perhaps it is
taught here in Seton Hall.
It's what's in the
central lines of my study.
I would specialize in Lonergan
but I was aware here of
so this whole list, Daniel
O'Connell of Ireland.
Henry David Thoreau, I hope
you know him quite well.
Civil disobedience, both literature
but very much this active
nonviolent philosophy.
For how do you change an unjust state
in a democratic state where you ought
to observe the rules of the
democratic state sort of,
even if you are put into jail
for active nonviolent protests.
But it's within democracy.
Mahatma Gandhi, Martin
Luther King, Nelson Mandela,
I don't know if you've heard
of the Philippine People Power Revolution
that overthrew General Markov in 1986.
The point was there
was a self aware method
that they were trained in.
How not to be violent with the police
even if they're knocking you on the head
when you're making a peaceful
protest, this kind of thing.
Daniel O'Connell, the Irish
man I was delighted to hear
as a sort of founder figure,
just one comment on him.
He witnessed the effects
of the French Revolution.
He was an Irish Nationalist
around late 1700's,
of a fairly rich Irish
family as Catholics go.
But so very committed to work
for independence of Ireland
from Britain and very
aware of many injustices
at the 1700's were a rough century
for Catholics in Britain and Ireland.
But he was taken aback by
seeing the consequences
of violence after the French Revolution
especially in fact, in Napoleon.
So from scratch, in
some ways, he determined
to adopt a method that
would employ the instruments
of British democracy.
And while there was all sorts
of distortions in elections
it was still possible
to get Irish members
of Parliament elected.
Who would then try to block
the business of Parliament
unless concessions were made
to the Irish Independence movement.
Anyways, that's just a little bit of
kind of self advertising as an Irish man.
So now I move along to my African years,
and I'll talk more about
some of my academic formation
as I talk about Lonergan.
But I found myself not
only studying in Africa,
and not only teaching full time theology.
But for a period, being assigned as pastor
to a poor parish in Nairobi.
That's a photograph of it
when Pope Francis visited.
It's the one Jesuit parish in Nairobi.
It's in the slums.
And he met with representatives
of all the slum parishes in
Nairobi to give a talk there.
Of course, I was gone for
six years so I missed it.
The whole event.
But a happy happy six years I was there.
I want to talk about two
experiences of active nonviolence
as a pastor of a parish with
which I was directly involved.
Well first of all, a prelude to that.
There was a certain
organization of priests
from the poor parishes of
Nairobi, the periphery,
as Pope Francis says.
They brought over people
from the Philippines
who had been involved
in the active nonviolent
overthrow of Markov.
It won't surprise you to hear,
they were shadowed by
the Kenyan secret police
after all of their two weeks in Kenya.
But they gave us quite a specific training
in active nonviolence methods.
And especially the history
of what had happened in the Philippines.
A very happy event, it really
was active nonviolence.
But anyway, you never know
what's going to happen
in parish life from week to week.
But it was in the background,
this kind of method of act of nonviolence
that we had been trained in.
One event emerged where,
we're mostly a poor area
but up on a hill there is
a very rich housing estate.
Which technically was part of our parish.
A great proportion of
people there were Catholics
because they had been educated
in the Catholic schools
which were the best schools in Kenya.
None of them came to parish at our church.
They went in their cars
to a middle class parish down the road.
The road was a big motorway
that lead west out of Nairobi.
A large number of the
population in the slum area
had to walk through the rich
area to get to the road.
The organizing committee,
the residents committee,
started putting up gates
to make a gated community
out of their housing estate.
So we made inquiries,
there was no legality
whatsoever in what they did.
If I committed violence here,
it was violence against some iron posts.
We were instructed by lawyers
to take down whatever they
built because it wasn't legal.
So we also were quite
involved in ecumenism.
There were a lot of Anglicans in the area.
So it was with the Anglican ministries
that we started to try to open dialogue
with the residents committee.
And it was quite remarkable,
there was one guy there
who was a junior minister
of government who
threatened us with violence.
That he could send in thugs if he wanted.
But we kept the process going.
Next a very very sad
tragic event happened.
There were security
guards outside each gate.
There were a crowd of delinquents
from down in the slum,
who I think had been throwing
stones at the security guards.
Meanwhile, the son of the
chairman of the pastoral council
of the Anglican parish was
walking back from school
and at the security guards
were chasing in anger
the guys that were running away.
Saw this fellow in his school uniform,
the others had not been
in a school uniform,
and beat him to death.
So now the Anglicans were up in arms
and the funeral of the boy occurred.
And the father stood at the graveside
and appealed to the people
not to commit any violence.
This is not christianity,
that you've got to somehow
respond returning good for evil.
The residents committee heard about this
and they cooled down their position
in the negotiations with us.
We found a way to agree in fact,
that all they needed to do was block cars
that were coming through.
It was really thieves coming
through in automobiles
that were the problem.
So pedestrians could
go through in the end.
So I'll just leave it
at that as an example.
There were other examples
where I was more personally involved
and trying to remember to be Christ like
in positions of conflict
and aware that transformation can happen.
There can be a moral transformation
when you have entered into
conflict in the right way.
On the part of an oppressor
which is what we were
confronting on certain occasions.
Okay, the Bernard Lonergan.
So this is, I'm aware of time,
and I know people have to go.
I'm only arriving
at the very technical
philosophy, theology now.
But I've covered the basis, basically
of what I'll be explaining
in a more academic methodological way now.
Bernard Lonergan was deeply affected
by the economic crash of 1929.
So he was at that age, he was from Canada.
Already a Jesuit.
Had studied philosophy, very brilliant.
Attracted to cognitional
theory to questions
of how do we know anything?
He recognized that was very important.
But at an affective level,
between philosophy and
theology he was brought back
from England where he did his philosophy
and worked in his home area of Montreal.
And saw friends of his parents
queuing at soup kitchens
because they were unemployed and hungry.
And he was scandalized by this.
He would soon later go for studies
in the Gregorian University
where I teach in Rome.
And witness the rise of Mussolini.
So you had economic depression,
the rise of fascism.
And he felt very committed
to trying to help society out of this.
There is a crisis of
civilization that is evident.
Now being the kind of
intellectual that he was,
he said, "This has intellectual roots."
For example, I'm convinced, he said
that there were economic mistakes
made at the level of theory
that influenced government
decisions that made the
depression a depression in 1929
instead of a recession.
Similarly, there's a
philosophy of the human person
at work in Nazism, in Italian fascism.
That's not so very different
from the communists outside of the,
what would later be the Iron Curtain.
The state is more important
than the individual.
That there is good we're trying to do
and it might have been the case of Nazis
just before the Aryan people.
But basically we will,
you know, to say the least
break eggs to make the omelet.
If the dignity of the
individual did not have a place
and there's also a sort of utopia.
We're trying to solve
everything here in this life.
We're going to attain a
perfect society at all costs.
But it's the state that will do it.
Under the control of an elite
that knows better than everybody else.
So he started working on economics
and especially a philosophy of history.
As he would write in his book, Insight,
which is a work of his maturity later.
If you're going to try to
intelligently direct history,
you have to have an
adequate theory of history.
You have to have an
adequate social analysis,
some people would say later.
And theological analysis
in fact of the situation
And a set of intellectual instruments
that can help produce
the kind of solutions
that are necessary in any given situation.
So, now I'm really jumping fast
here on the academic front.
Lonergan, quite young while
he was still before ordination
said, "I want to devote my life
to developing a philosophy of history."
I don't have time to explain
this at great length.
He would write his, just two
master works in his life.
An 800 book called, Insight.
An 800 page book called, Insight.
And a shorter book called
Method in Theology.
But I'd like to explain by this diagram,
I just kind of made this up,
but it's my best way of explaining
what's at the heart of his thinking.
But I hope I've already
explained his motivation.
I call it his social concern.
He talks about, he uses vector analysis.
He was a gifted mathematician
among other things.
So the analogy, the metaphor
of vectors to study history.
If you're studying a moving item,
let's say a rocket going to the moon.
At the vector analysis we
remember that, I remember that,
I didn't love math as it got
up to its higher reaches.
They're a model, an
idealized model of forces.
You never see a vector in real life.
These are theoretical
instruments that you use.
That when combined, they
produce the trajectory
that you're already observing
and predict its further direction.
So this is by analogy, a
vectorial analysis of history.
So his first principle is to say,
if we imagine a situation
where everybody was authentic.
What would history look like?
This is the imaginary vector
of progress in history.
Now I've sort of put
things out of order a bit.
The next slide is about
his basic epistemology.
We have a process of knowing
that passes through
experience, understanding,
judgment, and decision.
But now I'm going back
just to say very briefly,
the progress, if you had authentic people,
would still involve a lot of change.
There would be processes
going on in history
where science is helping
technological innovation.
Technology is bumping
along economic change.
Politics is involved with distributic,
the benefits of what is
being produced economically.
And culture gives the set
of meanings and values
that guide the politicians who
in turn direct the economy.
Especially that.
So this is an idealized notion.
His economic theory which
he started to work on
was based on, well, an idea or notion
of how should an economy work.
I won't go into details about that.
Progress, it's a process.
Next vector, inauthentic decisions.
We go off the rails personally
at any and all of the levels of knowing.
Attentiveness, be intelligent,
be reasonable, be responsible.
So consequences in society
of inauthentic decisions
produced a series of decline policies.
So now, the reality we face
is a mixture of a social reality
where policies have been decided upon
that are sometimes both good and bad.
And we live with the hodgepodge
of progress and decline
in our society and in our culture as well.
So there's a great need then
to have a measure on what is authentic.
And then go again to the next,
there should of course be an arrow there
and I just don't have the
technology to draw that arrow
through those four
levels of consciousness.
And then there's the need,
he talks about the cultural elite
at least emanating out of universities
who have a measure of what
would be progress for society.
What do we actually have?
And then I go back again,
this third arrow needs a
fair bit of explaining.
But to start with, it is
that these cultured people
who are working at their own authenticity
would learn to reverse decline
and promote progress in history.
In the history around them.
In the social structures around them.
But first and foremost
at a cultural level.
Clarify what are the meanings and values
that we should be living by.
And then hope that the consequences
for more structured policies
would follow from that.
It's just that we are never
authentic is the catch.
So at a philosophical level,
I've been speaking about at
the process of doing this.
So really, I'm going, where am I going?
Excuse me if I'm giving you a headache
with these changes of slides.
Redemption comes from Jesus
Christ, Lonergan is saying.
He talks about moral impotence.
The human race is caught,
left to its own devices.
Inauthenticity is stronger
than authenticity.
Decline is stronger than
progress in history.
Decline sets up vicious circles.
Above all, what he calls general bias.
Where you attack the very
instruments of intelligence
that should be part of the solution.
So you abuse as a nerd,
as an egg head anybody
who's trying to formulate
intelligent solutions
at a level of culture
and social structures.
So there is, he becomes a
theologian at this moment
and not just a philosopher.
He says that it's not just a
Catholic or Christian event
that grace would happen.
But there is a supernatural
intervention in history.
I see that time is going.
Feel free to leave, I
understand and have been warned
that a number of students have to leave.
So as you wish in your own time.
So the redemption of history
that reverses decline
and promotes progress will
have to come from communities
of God's grace.
You can talk about the ins And outs of
that Christian church
is at the heart of this,
he certainly believed.
United Nations, what are even
the communal secular institutions
that are actually channeling
grace into communal reflection.
Now, I've come to this book.
That's the title of this book.
This is Lonergan applied to the subgenre
of the conflict resolution.
It's an excellent book.
In many ways it is, of course,
an exercise in confronting
the decline in society
that represents violence especially.
At the conflicts.
I think of Northern Ireland all the time.
At the Protestants, Catholics
fighting each other.
Loyalists, nationalists.
So very briefly, it's an invitation.
First of all, this book
is for training mediators.
So these mediators should be
part of what Lonergan calls
this cultural elite of people
who have self appropriated the structure
of their own authenticity.
And are able to try to
then work with communities.
Who will, try to get them
to a place of reconciliation
and return to progress
from the place of decline
where they have got themselves.
So the mediation process
involves the dialogue of parties.
And above all it's to
trace the steps you took
in this process of decision making.
Where might you have gone off the rails
to make a violent choice?
But then also try to get inside the head
of the person that
you're in conflict with.
So Catholics in Northern
Ireland have to try
to understand the good
that is in Protestants.
And how their historical
narrative of their own lives
includes occasional massacres
by the Irish Catholics around them.
And empathy for the other position.
Then again I knew some specific people
who worked at Northern Ireland,
helping groups of
Protestants and Catholics
write a joint narrative
that does justice to the two traditions.
Recognizes how violence occurred
but finds a way to move forward
to a new reconciled position.
And the amazing thing in Northern Ireland
is that there was a peace agreement
at the, of course we can
talk more about this.
Now, it's 4:47 and I'm only now getting
to the main point of my talk in one sense.
But I believe I've been covering it also.
Robert Doran adds something to this.
I've given an explanation
of Lonergan's affective
commitment to helping history,
helping the poor who are suffering
from bad economic policies, etc.
But his highly theoretical move then
to work on epistemology
philosophy of history.
He's convinced that there has to be work
at that intellectual level
if real and valuable
policies will be applied.
It's not obvious,
how do you solve problems of
a modern economy, for example.
Or for that matter,
complicated political origins
of fascism in the 1930's.
So intelligence, the role
of an academic specialist
in the process of really
elevating history.
I've talked about that.
But I want to now talk about Bob Doran
in this book called Theology
and the Dialectics of History.
Just to add, I'm only
connecting the dots now
between my own personal
testimony that I've given
and this more theoretical level.
Conversion, especially
intellectual conversion.
To be authentic in our use of
the levels of consciousness,
is all very well.
But what if you're like me as a novice?
And you have unconscious distortions
leading you off the rails.
A simple intellectual invitation
to intellectual conversion
isn't going to cut it.
So what about the healing of
the unconscious interference
with the levels of...
Consciousness that
constitute authenticity.
I wrote a book on Lonergan and Doran,
you can't really see it, I think.
Social Concern in Bernard
Lonergan and Robert Doran.
I tell kind of two
intellectual biographies.
The Lonergan biography and then I suggest
that Robert Doran is in
continuity with Lonergan.
A fellow Jesuit, a kind of
anointed son by Bernard Lonergan.
He became the curator of
the legacy of Lonergan
for publishing the
collective works of Lonergan.
As a fellow Jesuit, he
did this under obedience.
With the permission of Jesuit superiors.
But there's this expansion
of a notion of psychic conversion.
That becomes crucial to
helping authenticity happen
and even to the theory of history.
There's an expansion of
the theory of progress,
decline, and redemption that
comes from Doran's edition.
So I want to just briefly mention,
I don't know if you know this painting.
Salvador Dali, at the
Christ of John at the Cross.
It's actually in Glasgow,
I got permission to use it on
the front cover of my book.
It's really more about resurrection
than it is about crucifixion.
You know, we're lucky
there isn't a hippopotamus
upside down in this painting,
it being that it comes from Salvador Dali.
This is his very christian, Catholic phase
at the end of his life.
But it's really about
the value of the cross
breathing life onto history.
If you see, there's a
lake and a boat there.
In truth, it's Galilee.
It's John 21 at the resurrection scene
to the disciples after fishing all night.
But I understand it also to be
the crucified and risen Christ
hovering over the course
of history, redeeming it.
And that's already Bernard Lonergan.
He talks about the law of the cross
as a distinct theme that comes
from the theological tradition.
Where we become Christ like.
On the cross, Jesus returns good for evil.
And becomes a model for
us to do the same thing.
But what I want to talk about is that
with Doran's greater
psychoanalytical background.
He gets inside the
dynamics of how the cross
saves us as a symbol.
And even how as messengers of the cross
we become cooperators in
the redemption of history.
In brief, he talks about how victimization
occurs in our youth.
Sexual abuse is in the
environment these days,
so we're not far from these issues here.
But we're all actually
harmed from our youth.
Even if the sexually abused
is the most extreme case.
So we have defense mechanisms.
The only cure for the
woundedness that we feel
is unconditional love.
But we set up defense mechanisms
because we're just too
afraid of taking the risk
that we might be healed and then let down.
We find it impossible
to accept the sincerity
of the person offering
us unconditional love.
Up to the point where we're
capable of committing violence
because we have so defended
ourselves to reject the person
that is offering unconditional love to us.
I invite you to think,
this is a dream kind of analysis.
This is a symbolic discourse
I'm now involved with
that Bob Doran gives.
Imagine you're the good
thief crucified beside Jesus.
You have been in this
compulsive bad behavior
and you've got your just rewards.
Along comes Jesus and you
say, truly this is a good man
and he's definitely dying.
Now I can accept there is an
offer of unconditional love
here that is not insincere.
Just switch gospel at Mark
at the centurion at the foot of the cross
"Truly this was a just man."
So the image of the cross
as the unconditional love
up to the end, whereby
it accepts the rejection
that we who are too hurt
to accept it, apply to it.
However, there's one
even worse bit of news.
I invite you to imagine that
we are also the soldiers
who hit the nails into
the hands of Christ.
It's not all victimization,
our misbehavior.
There is sin in the world
and we participate in it.
So symbolically, we are both the soldier
that hammers the nails into Christ's hands
and the good thief who is promised
"Today you will be in paradise with me."
And this all is made
understandable by the resurrection.
So it's the resurrection of Christ
that helps us make meaning of suffering
and equips us then to become
what somebody called the wounded healer.
There's this paradox whereby
we're not perfect overnight
but we who are wounded are nevertheless
significantly in the process of healing.
And we have this paradoxical deep desire
to spot other people who are
up to the same funny business
that we have been until recently.
Violent and otherwise.
So, who spoke about the wounded healer?
(murmuring)
No.
Of course, he wrote a book of that title.
But who spoke first?
Who was Henri Nouwen quoting?
(murmuring)
It's Karl Jung.
Karl Jung coined the term
and Henri Nouwen, well
our generation due respect
immediately recognized the
book, The Wounded Healer,
as a masterpiece of spiritual right.
So Bob Doran uses Jung a great deal.
But anyway, I could almost finish now.
You see what I'm getting at.
At the complimenting this
moral strictly Lonergan view
is slightly rational that
understands the person
you're in conflict with, etc.
There's all sorts of room to move
from a notion of psychic conversion
to a sense of being wounded healers.
Being able to negotiate symbols
that inhabit people in conflict.
In a certain sense,
the way I've just been
talking symbolically
about how do you work
at the cross as a symbol
that motivates us.
So attending to the psyche,
to feelings and dreams.
Clear up blockages to self transcendence,
passionateness of being,
and aesthetic discernment of life choices.
Applied, however, to the
process of active nonviolence.
And I'm really not going
into further detail
because having done the work.
But there would be, you know,
a second book to be written.
Expanding what's here, I think.
With the insights that come
from psychic conversion.
For example, treating
what is the symbol system
that inhabits the mind of
the people in conflict.
It's not just where did I make mistakes
of judgment and decision.
It's also, how do I need
to adopt new symbols?
Different symbols as motivating me.
So healing only occurs with grace.
I want to go back to that point.
It can't be only secular.
Now we're all in favor
of the social doctrine
of the church etc.
We're not talking about grace as exclusive
to the christianity or
to the Catholic Church.
But we believe, nonetheless, something
that most other people wouldn't know.
Which is, in fact, what's happening
is that they are being graced
in some mysterious way,
participating in the cross
and resurrection of Christ.
Whenever they're capable of reconciling
and returning decline to progress.
Unconditional love and self sacrifice.
Christ, the perfect scapegoat.
Those of you that have some
philosophical background
will recognize no small
amount of Renee Girard
in the account that Doran makes of this.
So, that's it.
Thank you very much.
We've already seen our students go away
but I'll be staying for questions.
(applauding)
