Cinderella

I just saw the Disney film Cinderella with my daughter. I had heard that it respected the tradition and irritated feminists, so, being a lover of the classic fairy tales well told, I didn't want to miss it. I was not disappointed. [Everyone knows the story - and there are no surprises in that regard - but if you don't want to know some of the nice touches Kenneth Branagh added don't read on.]

Cinderella tells the tale straightforwardly, with enough fresh interpretations to keep the well-known story interesting, yet without compromising the integrity of the tradition. For example, the Fairy Godmother is first seen as a poor and somewhat disgusting beggar woman. Cinderella, having just been denied an opportunity to go to the ball by her stepmother, is despondent as the years of oppression she has endured finally overwhelm her. The Fairy Godmother as beggar woman asks her for some milk; Cinderella immediately puts her own problems aside and serves the beggar woman, who sloppily slurps down the milk. Only after allowing Cinderella to reveal herself through this act of charity does the Fairy Godmother reveal herself.

A fair amount of time is spent on backstory, providing details on how Cinderella ends up living with her stepmother and stepsisters and tying up some loose ends. For instance, if the stepmother is so nasty, how did her good father end up married to her? Cate Blanchett is terrific as the stepmother, and in one of her final confrontations with Cinderella, tells the story of what happened to her. She is twice a widow, once before and the second time with Cinderella's father, and the loss of two loves has embittered her and, finally, twisted her into a villain. And in fact we see a degeneration of the stepmother as the film goes on. We first see her as she marries Cinderella's father, and at that point she is hardly an out-and-out villain, although she is clearly no innocent. It is only after Cinderella's father dies that she descends to the point of no return. There is a wonderful contrast here with Cinderella, who has also suffered two losses, first her mother and then her father. But Cinderella refuses to allow tragedy to embitter her.

It is the theme of that refusal that makes this interpretation of Cinderella unique and powerful. Its origin is also told in the backstory when Cinderella's mother, close to dying, reveals the secret to life, which is to "have courage and always be kind". She insists that Cinderella vow to remain true to these ideals, which, naturally, Cinderella tearfully does. The linkage of courage and kindness is profound, for it takes courage to be kind. It also answers the feminist criticism that Cinderella is merely a passive victim awaiting rescue by a prince. This Cinderella is not passive, but she is not active in the manner of worldly overcoming approved by feminists; instead she is active in the manner of the Gospel, answering hate with love and cruelty with kindness. It is not easy for her, and it is only by recalling her mother, her mother's wisdom, and the vow she made to her that she is able to endure. While the stepmother gradually becomes a complete slave to the bitterness and envy that consumes her, Cinderella remains free by the active fidelity to her ideals.

But there is more to it than that. Cinderella's mother also links courage and kindness to magic - that is, a transcendent hope. Here we have the purely Christian element in disguised form. And it is just here that the secular/feminist criticism has some bite. Suppose that no Fairy Godmother arrived when Cinderella was despondent after being denied an opportunity to go to the ball. Then isn't Cinderella just the doormat the feminists say she is? Branagh's manifestation of the Fairy Godmother as a beggar woman helps to answer this. Cinderella still treats her with kindness despite her despair and reveals the depth of her character, a character that will endure even if there is no such thing as fairy godmothers. The stepmother and stepsisters are driven by circumstance, imagining a future with the prince that is even more unrealistic than fairy godmothers. And when those worldly outcomes don't turn out, they are destroyed, as the stepmother destroys herself in her bitterness. Cinderella's character, by contrast, a character developed and formed in terms of her commitment to her ideals, endures despite circumstance. If there are not fairy godmothers Cinderella will remain who she is; melancholy perhaps but consoled by the memories of her mother and father. This is further reinforced after the ball, when Cinderella begins to reconcile herself to the possibility that she will never see the prince again. The memory of the ball, she decides, will be added to the memories of her mother and father and will be enough for her. This is the summit of pagan or non-Christian virtue. In a world without the Gospel, despair is not inevitable, even if the love we ultimately desire is not attainable.

But there are fairy godmothers or, to interpret the allegory, Christ did rise from the dead. The last shall be first and the first last, the meek shall inherit the earth; these are not mere hopes but truths. Cinderella's virtue is good in a world even without fairy godmothers; but in a world with them, it opens her up to a destiny not available to the vicious, and not because the vicious are vicious but because they have no time for fairy godmothers.

Some other nice touches from the film: On alighting from her carriage, Cinderella is momentarily hesitant to climb the steps to the ball. "I am really a common girl, not a princess." Her footman answers - "And I am really a lizard, not a footman. Let us enjoy this time while we can." Nice. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand - and nature is swept up in the redemption of man.

The film ends with Cinderella forgiving the stepmother - forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Harris, Faith and Science. Commentary on Waking Up Part 5

This is the fifth part of my commentary on Sam Harris's Waking Up.

A theme that Harris repeatedly emphasizes in Waking Up is that the Eastern spirituality he advocates does not necessarily require any belief in a faith-based system (which Harris thinks is pernicious) or subscription to any metaphysical dogmas. According to Harris, it can be approached entirely empirically. For these reasons it is allegedly superior to Western spirituality, in particular Christian-inspired spirituality.

But Harris's proposed spirituality does in fact require faith, or at least faith as it has been understood in the Christian tradition. This differs from the currently popular understanding of "faith", which just means willed belief in propositions without evidence. The traditional understanding of "faith" is closer in meaning to what we think of as trust; as in we believe in something because we trust the person proposing it, and have reason to think he is in a position to know the truth of it. This understanding of faith is, in fact, not restricted to religion but is how the mass of individuals are related to, for instance, science. The average man cannot duplicate the experiments of the trained scientist or perhaps even understand the details of the scientist's theories. But he believes what the scientist proposes to him because he has reason to believe that the scientist knows what he is talking about when it comes to science. The average man is rightly impressed with the technological wonders that are based on science and sees them as confirmation of the scientist's theories. Trust is involved because, not understanding the science and therefore the true connection between science and technical wonders, the average man must take the scientist's word for what the science truly is and what it implies.

With respect to Christianity, and specifically with respect to the Catholic Church, faith does not mean believing propositions without evidence, but in trusting  that the Church is a true witness to what it claims to have witnessed - the Resurrection of Christ. That witness, and its ratification by Christ Himself,  is the basis of the authority of the original Apostles, and that authority has been passed on through history to the generations of bishops. The average man's relationship to the bishops is much like that of his relationship to scientists. He must trust the bishop, as he does the scientist, to communicate to him the true meaning and significance of that which he is in no position to fully understand.

The big difference, of course, between the bishop and the scientist is that the bishop does not have the full spectrum of modern technical wonders with which to impress the average man. But he does have, perhaps, the occasional miracle, and he certainly has the ordinary witness of saints. The impressive lives of saints like Francis, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Xavier, and many others, testify to the effect of Christ in their lives and through that testimony support the witness of the Church.

What is the nature of the faith involved in Sam Harris's spirituality? He claims there is none, but in fact the prospective meditator is taking it on faith that meditation will have the effects that Harris claims it will. In the extreme, Harris claims that meditation will reveal the illusion of the self, but even if this is true, it will be experienced only after many years of meditation. The person who spends years meditating just to discover if the claims about meditation are true so he can take up meditating, has of course already answered his question. Skeptics rightly make the same point with respect to some Christian apologists who claim prayer can be tested empirically. When prayer doesn't soon have the evidential effect that was hoped, the apologist counsels patience that God works in his own time (which He does). But asking someone to pray for an indefinite period as a way to establish that prayer is a worthwhile activity in the first place is hardly a reasonable request.

Sam Harris is asking us to trust that meditation will have the evidential effect he says it will - specifically, that it will bring one to perceive the illusion of the self. Harris implicitly admits this by spending considerable time bringing in science in an attempt to support this belief (which I have addressed in earlier posts.) Such preliminaries would not be necessary if Harris weren't writing a check he promises to cash later.

But the same thing is true of "faith-based" Christian spirituality. The Church claims that through prayer, fasting, and reception of the Sacraments, the Christian will discover a relationship with Christ that fulfills all the promises that the Church makes about Him. Such a promise must be taken on trust (faith) but, like Harris, the Church does not demand that anyone believe this promise without evidence, but marshalls evidence in support of its promise - just as does Sam Harris.

God, Faith and Limited Government

Faith is necessary to believe in limited government. For limited government means that, for significant elements of our common life together, no one is in charge. How do we know that disaster will not ensue? This is where faith comes in.

One of the traditional notions we have lost is the doctrine of Providence. Belief in Providence is the belief that, even though it appears that no one is in charge, Someone really is. Disaster will not ensue. Since we are assured through our faith in God that disaster will not ensue, or, at least, that disaster will never be quite so bad as it appears, we may safely create zones of freedom in which no one is (apparently) in charge.

When the common belief in Providence is lost the world becomes a much scarier place. Now potential catastrophes reveal themselves as possible and even probable eventualities - from global warming to collisions with asteroids. Freedom that was once the expression of a mysterious Providence working itself out through history becomes a blind stumbling in the dark that will encounter catastrophe eventually - "if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit."

It's not just the fear of catastrophic anomalies like a killer asteroid that reflects the loss of belief in Providence. It is also the belief in slow, creeping doom of the kind expressed in John Derbyshire's We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism. Derbyshire is both a (secular) conservative believer in limited government and convinced, for a variety of reasons, that our present civilization is doomed. His response is essentially Epicurean: He advises seeking "private contentment in the present as the earth-pile rises." In other words, accept your fate and enjoy yourself while you can.

It is only scholarly, detached types like Derbyshire who will be satisfied with such a counsel of despair. People will look for hope. There are two alternatives: One is to recognize that the problems Derbyshire details in his book are not all intractable. In fact, many of them, like our failure to control our southern border, are susceptible to straightforward solution. An authoritarian government could solve the problem directly. But our republican system has not yet developed the will to act decisively with respect to immigration; and it may not do so before it is too late. An obvious alternative is to sacrifice certain republican principles to do what it takes to forestall our doom. In fact, we are not doomed; we are only doomed if we maintain the commitment to limited government even in the face of predictable, but avoidable, catastrophe. We can put someone in charge to deal with the problems before it is too late. Thus Derbyshire's conservative doom is, in the end, not really different from left-wing scaremongering of the type seen in global-warming hysteria. The difference is that the left-wingers take the obvious next step that Derbyshire doesn't: If society in its freedom cannot avoid putting so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it puts civilization in danger (the left-wing case), or cannot deal with immigration or the terrorist threat (the right-wing doom case), then freedom must be curtailed to the extent necessary to ensure the survival of civilization (the left-wing solution that is nonetheless implicit in Derbyshire's right-wing doom.)

The other alternative is to recover the traditional doctrine of Providence; and find hope in the faith that Someone is already in charge, and even if things don't look rosy, as long as we remain confident in faith no disaster that we cannot survive will occur. We can support freedom because we are not "doomed"; we are only doomed in the eyes of a blinkered, worldly viewpoint that cannot live in the mystery of a Will greater than its own.

It is the doctrine of Providence that is necessary to limited government.