Works and Prayers of a Fils Prodigue

“Man has the right the live” — John XXIII, Pacem in Terris

In “A Canticle for Leibowitz,” mankind has committed the unpardonable sin, the “Flame Deluge,” leaving “a billion corpses” lying dead, unmourned and unburied — men, through nuclear arms, obliterated nearly all of creation and all of culture. The book itself traces about 2000 years of history through the eyes of The Albertian Order of Saint Lebowitz. St. Leibowitz is a 20th century physicist who survives the nuclear war, becomes an ordained priest after his wife dies, and spends his life organizing collections of the “memorabilia” (written documents of all kinds) during the “Simplification.” While the book stresses the importance of the Church in the preservation of culture in a newly barbarian world, a deeper message perhaps comes through — the incredible, impossible madness of man.

One particular Abbot of the Order of St. Leibowitz, incensed at man’s insistent inclination toward destruction, cries out to God:

“Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing?”

One can’t help but feel this way when one considers the mountains of caked blood and flesh which buried the earth in the past 100 years. What could bring man to obliterate his brother so senselessly, so maddeningly?

Last semester I was quite involved in studying peace and conflict — the history of war, the history of weaponry, the reasons for war, the inside and out of nuclear war, etc. I had to leave it for a while, because it became somewhat of an obsession for me, such that it began to encroach upon my spiritual life. But, to this day, I’m not convinced that encroachment wasn’t necessary. When we consider that there are enough nuclear weapons on earth to destroy it entirely seven times over, why aren’t more of us concerned?

My guess is that, for most of us, its not real. Abstractly there are these machines out there somewhere which, if utilized, would nullify a lot of other abstractions (namely, the people we can’t see). It seems that we — myself included — have a hard time going to our knees over abstractions. I can’t truly fathom what it must be like to be huddled in my living room, as the birds of hell drop bombs of fire on everyone I love. I can’t imagine a city, at once bustling, at once destroyed, peopled only by shadows and men with their flesh dangling from their bones as they walk. Can we imagine this? A billion hands furled in the dirt? A billion mouths melted shut, or two billion eyes turned to water?

Dustin Kensrue (one of my favorite Christian artists) wrote a sonnet entitled “The Flame Deluge” (he presumably read “A Canticle for Leibowitz”), in which the final couplet is this:

Who will stand to greet the blinding light?

Its lonely when there’s no one left to fight.

I think about this often, and I consider what drove the world to madness in the 20th century. No doubt that it was a mad thirst for power, a demonic thirst slaked by blood — but afterwards. What drove us mad? Had man ever had to cope with the death of a billion of his brothers? Had man ever been asked to see so much horror, and yet remain good? It is no wonder that so little faith remains in man. It is a wonder that he remains complicit with the cause of his madness — or at least, its material cause.

In fact, this might be a situation in which the anarchist — or rather, the radical personalist — has the ethical upper-hand. Who could obey a power which, in the same breath, constantly threatens entire nations with destruction? How could such a power be just? Such a power’s existence would be a “contravention to the moral order.” The Christian anarchist says “Let the nation be dissolved, only do not strike the masses with fire.” There is never a moral justification for the purposeful incineration of nations. Not the preservation of one’s own nation, one’s own family, one’s own life. A nation which purports to be Christian would, in my mind, lay down its life on the altar of its brother’s madness as a prayer to the Lord.

But still, the idea boils down to personal responsibility doesn’t it? We take the easy way out — we say “nothing will stop them unless we stop them — unless we bomb their hospitals and schools, unless we poison their land and raid their homes, unless we make them burn until they surrender.” But this is the way of the coward, not the way of the Christian. The Christian is, above all, too brave for nuclear weaponry, or conventional means of destruction. He is noble and hopeful, he has the whole host of Heaven in his defense, the Creator Omnis is His Father. What has he to fear?

Before all else, the Christian is called to something more noble and courageous than war — he is called to be a witness and a pilgrim, a sane man in a world of wolves. He does not threaten men and women and children with death, but dies to himself in order to save them. This is the only sanity that remains, in an age of atomic power — the white martyrdom of the saints themselves, instead of the cup of wrath which man forces himself to drink. Only the sane man could stand amongst the barbarians and profess: man has a right to live.