Narnia: Symbolism

Brian wrote:

CS Lewis a great philospher? You must be kidding. He isn't even a good apologist. Lord, Lunatic or Liar? (You missed an "L" How about Legend?) Have you ever read any critical theology or any real critiques of the argument from design? God, CS Lewis is really, really bad. I would love to have been able to watch a Dawkins or Hitchens blow him away in a debate. Better yet a critical religious scholar like Bart Ehrman, Bruce Metzger, Burton mack, or Robert Price, who all undoubtedly know the Bible much better than he did.

I can really only believe you have never seriously grappled with any counter-arguments to Lewis.

May God bless Christopher Hitchens.

I heard Christopher Hitchens interviewed a few times, read a few articles about some of his debates, and sometimes read his own writings of which I here address just three: (1) a less than one-page article he wrote on Gandhi and Maximilian Kolbe which appeared in "The Nation" in 1983, (2) his book published in 1997 on that "Villain of Villains" (to borrow a phrase of Christopher Buckley uttered sarcastically in defense of that "Villain"), Mother Teresa ("The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice" - I wonder whether it was Hitchens, the publisher, or someone else who titled the book), and (3) "god is not Great" published in 2009.

In "The Nation" article on Gandhi and Kolbe, Hitchens dismisses them both as unholy fakirs and, on a tissue of evidence and ignoring abundant and robust evidence contrariwise, called Kolbe an anti-Semite who got what he deserved at Auschwitz. The article was written in 1983 shortly after the Catholic Church canonized Kolbe as a saint in 1982. (I will leave to others any defense of Gandhi as I am less familiar with his history and I do not share as many beliefs with him as I do with Kolbe and the Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (increasingly "Kolkata")). Kolbe (1894-1941) was a Pole who earned two doctorates as part of his formation as a priest and Franciscan Friar (the various Franciscan orders derive their names from St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)). Kolbe was head of a Franciscan friary (of about 700 men) in Poland while Poland was under siege first by Russian Communists and later by Nazis. He hid roughly 3,000 Poles, including an estimated 300 - 1,500 Jews, in the friary at considerable risk to himself, to the other friars, and to the Catholic Church. He encouraged others to hide Jews as well, and specifically instructed his fellow Franciscans not to inflame anti-Semitic sentiments - Kolbe had a media apostolate, producing Catholic newspapers, magazines, and the like. He even is reported to have organized the delivery of gifts to the Jewish children hidden in the Friary (the Christian children had received gifts for Christmas which the Jewish children did not celebrate). Kolbe spoke fluent German and was offered German citizenship but refused it. His father, Julius Kolbe, was a Polish patriot, one of Pilsudski's patriots, who battled against Bolsheviks in his efforts for the independence of a partitioned Poland, and for this Julius was hanged in 1914. The Nazis arrested Maximilian Kolbe in 1939 but eventually released him, only to arrest him again in 1941 on the charge that he was an intellectual. He was sent to Pawiak prison in February 1941, and in May 1941 was transferred to Auschwitz, often described as labor camp and a death camp.

Numerous records attest to Kolbe's behavior at Auschwitz. He shared his meager food rations with other detainees, and he blessed the Nazi's who almost beat him to death. In July 1941, a prisoner was unaccounted for and presumed to have escaped (reports indicate he was later found drowned in a latrine). To deter escapes, the Nazis assembled prisoners and selected ten for death by starvation. Franciszek Gajowniczek, a Polish army sergeant and one of the ten, cried out in despair for his wife and three children. It was then that Fr. Kolbe broke from the ranks, presented himself to deputy commander SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch while politely removing his own prisoner's cap, and spoke words approximating these: "I wish to take the place of that man. He has a wife and children. I am old and alone. I am a Catholic priest from Poland." (Fr. Kolbe was 47 years old; Sergeant Gajowniczek was 39). Commander Fritsch agreed to the switch. Kolbe and the other nine men (there may be no record of their identities), were marched to a starvation bunker, stripped, and locked inside. After about ten days, only four, including Kolbe, remained alive, though Kolbe suffered tuberculosis for most of his life. After a few more days, on 14 August 1941, Nazis gave lethal injections to the four, first to the two unconscious prisoners then to the two conscious prisoners. Fr. Kolbe was the last of the four to receive an injection. He died within a few seconds. His body was cremated the next day as hundreds of thousands would be over several years. Sergeant Gajowniczek, the man spared by Kolbe's courage, died in 1995, at 93 years of age.

I am happy to report that Hitchens seems to have retreated, even if only slightly, in his 2009 work "god is not Great" from his calumnious opinion of St. Maximilian Kolbe. Hitchens then wrote of a priest who "apparently behaved admirably" (I write from memory and do not have the book nearby) at Auschwitz, but quickly segued into sneering at Pius XII (pope from 1939-1958).

Hitchens' criticisms of Teresa of Calcutta are quite lame. Hitchens tries to persuade his audience that Teresa loved poverty but not the poor. If you are fairly well instructed in Catholicism, you will find Hitchens' criticism littered with his own misunderstanding on numerous points: he confuses the Virginal Conception (the belief that Jesus was conceived by a virgin, Mary) with the Immaculate Conception (that Mary's soul was created without original sin in a relationship with God similar to that of Adam and Eve's relationship with God before the Fall) and shows little comprehension of Catholic teaching regarding birth control, for example, the paradigmatic difference between artificial birth control, which the Catholic Church opposes) and natural family planning (NFP), of which, for the right reasons, the Catholic Church approves. NFP methods are fertility awareness methods that do not impair a woman's cyclical fertility or a man's fairly constant fertility (the Catholic Church encouraged the development of the various NFP methods: the Billings ovulation method, the Creighton method, and other symptomatic or thermal methods). He faults Teresa for calling abortion the greatest destroyer of peace in the world, though he himself elsewhere calls abortion an abomination, and neglects to offer his opinion on what precisely is a greater offender than abortion.

I'll stop there. I hope to write a book about Hitchens' take on Kolbe, Teresa and Pius XII. Hitchens strikes me as an elegant stylist, but extremely lazy with regard to research, and a remarkable bigot.

There is overwhelming evidence that early Christians prayed for the dead and that this was viewed favorably by the Fathers of the Church, and Catholics, Orthodox, and a few Protestants continue to pray for the dead. I believe in the incredible mercy of God and pray for the salvation of Christopher Hitchens.