Monday, August 23, 2010

Obama and Joachim of Fiore: the kernel of truth in the hoax

Sandro Magister has posted a piece, "There's a Strange Prophet in the White House" (www.chiesa, August 23, 2010), on the kernel of truth in the hoax about Mr. Obama's supposed citation of the Medieval visionary and heretic, Joachim of Fiore, a rumor so widespread that even Fr. Cantalamessa fell for it. Asked to comment by the online agency of the episcopal conference of the United States, "Catholic News Service," Cantalamessa responded: "Someone has used my words to insinuate that I also consider Obama a heretic like Joachim, while I have profound esteem for the new president of the United States." But when asked to say how he had found out about the three citations made by Obama, Fr. Cantalamessa said candidly: "Typing 'Obama Joachim of Fiore' into Google produces all of the news on which I based my speech."

Magister examines two recent books in Italian -- one by the journalist for Vatican Radio, Alessandro Gisotti, with a thorough understanding of America; the other by Martino Cervo, managing editor of the newspaper "Libero," and Mattia Ferraresi, a Washington correspondent for the newspaper "il Foglio." After a brief analysis, comes his conclusion:
In spite of the nonexistent citations, then, the resemblance remains between Obama's rhetoric and the vision of Joachim of Fiore. The theologian and cardinal Henri De Lubac would have had no difficulty in adding Obama to the crowded ranks of the "Spiritual posterity of Joachim of Fiore," the title of an extensive study he published thirty years ago on the influence that the utopia of that monk has had up until our time, inside and outside of Catholicism.
The work to which he refers is contained, in English translation, in Henri de Lubac's Drama of Atheist Humanism, in a detailed critical analysis of August Comte's ersatz religion of atheistic humanism, with all the pomp and accoutrements of the Catholic religion. Comte, it may be recalled, was famous for his Law of the Three Stages of history: the theological, metaphysical, and scientific ("positivist," in his vocabulary). While admiring and wanting to make use of Catholicism, his own vision is thoroughly atheistic and humanistic in an insidiously subtle way.

Joachim of Fiore is also famous for his three-fold division of history into ages of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, capitalizing on the last to set forth his own agenda, much as Catholic revisionists capitalized on the "SPIRIT" of Vatican II to push their own anti-Catholic agenda. Eric Voegelin's Science, Politics, And Gnosticism argues cogently for the view that much of modern politics is animated by a gnostic spirit that finds its roots and type in the theories of Joachim de Fiore. Among those Voeglin analyzes are Auguste Comte, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Karl Marx. Anyone who immerses himself in this material and begins connecting the dots, however, will see the familiarity with the vision inhabiting the thinking of the current Democratic administration. When the White House counters claims that Mr. Obama is a Muslim with declarations that he is "obviously Christian," one can discern the meaning of his "Christianity" only by an understanding of the decisively gnostic current that animates this set of beliefs.

At one time, Comte tried to enlist the allegiance of the Catholic Church in his construction of a new Positivist religious-and-political alliance. His emissary to Rome was firmly rebuffed. A generation later, Charles Maurras, the principal ideologist of Action Française, the French Monarchist (Orléanist) counter-revolutionary movementfounded in 1898, was more successful, as de Lubac points out, even though his "integralist" vision was not much different from that of Comte. The ideology and vision was fundamentally atheistic, but appealed to many in the Vatican because of points of superficial affinity in political interest.

10 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:32 PM

    Orleanist and monarchist aren't the same thing, by the way. Both my traditional friends in Sacramento (who assert that all the Traditionalists in France are monarchists) and a friend from here in the Valley, a Frenchman, mind, assert that the Orleanistes aren't properly monarchists.

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  2. It would depend on what one means by "monarchist." The Orleanists certainly are monarchists in that they support the claim of the Duke of Orleans to the throne of France.

    The Orleanists, however, are not Legitimist monarchists. The Duke of Anjou's claim to the French throne is superior to that of his junior cousin, the Duke of Orleans, so he is the legitimate claimant to the throne of France. Even non-legitimist monarchists are monarchists, however.

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  3. Anonymous5:47 PM

    Joachim was a noble figure, and produced a magnificent spiritual posterity. To talk of the prosaic Obama as a Joachimite is nonsense.

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  4. Joachim was a noble figure, and produced a magnificent spiritual posterity.

    Undoubtedly he was a spiritual visionary of sorts. But so were Savonarola, Huss, Wycliffe, Charles Taze Russell, Mary Baker Eddy, and Joseph Smith. And if one were to judge the tree by its fruits, this depends entirely by what standard one judges. If by the "Spirit of Vatican II" or "Emergent Church" standards, then he would doubtless be declared a saint. By Catholic standards, however, he falls short; and his posterity is anything but "magnificent," unless having your doctrine of the Trinity condemned by the Lateran Council of 1215, your central doctrines confuted by St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica (I-II, Q. cvi, a. 4) and St. Bonaventure, and your best disciple's work solemnly condemned by by Alexander IV, in 1256, can be called "magnificent."

    Try reading what the magisterial Eric Voegelin says about him (and Dante's view of him) in the work I cite in the post. Seemingly "little" errors in the beginning yield huge problems in the offing. This isn't to say that everything Joachim did or said is fatally contaminated, but the upshot of his life work is certainly stained and crippled from a magisterial Catholic point of view.

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  5. Anonymous4:35 AM

    Who is claiming that Joachim was orthodox? But painting Obama with every bad brush you can find is counter-productive. If Obama did something really evil (as like most Presidents he undoubtedly will) you will be in the position of the Boy who cried Wolf.

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  6. Please. Who's painting Obama with every bad brush he can find? Obama has many positive personal attributes, though doubtless not nearly as many as Lucifer. I'm not concerned here with Obama personally, but with the ideology that has taken possession of the near half of the country's population that got him elected. If you know intellectual history, as Eric Voeglin does, and if you know something about the sentiments that animate the mass movements of our times -- and the Obama campaign was nothing if not a well-orchestrated mass movement -- then you can begin seeing parallels.

    Neither am I concerned with whether Mr. Obama has done something "really evil" somewhere in his youth or childhood -- Whazzis? The Sound of Music? He's probably not particularly better or worse than any of us has been -- even if he smoked weed and was a lazy bum. We're talking intellectual movements and ideology here, not private sins.

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  7. Anonymous9:34 AM

    No, he may do something evil in foreign policy. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/30krugman.html?_r=1&hp

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  8. Anonymous. If you've got an intelligible point to make, please make it. This certainly isn't one. It has nothing to do with the post except for the tangent that Obama's administration is mentioned in the post. The post is about gnostic ideology and a false attribution to Mr. Obama of a reference to Joachim de Fiora. What in the world does this has to do with the ridiculous allegation made by Mr. Krugman on his overheated computer keyboard of a conspiratorial Republican "witch hunt" against Mr. Obama? The opposition to the current administration is a spontaneous ground swell of Americans fed up with Obama's profligate attempt to spend our way out of economic recession, and has nothing to do with Joachim of Fiore or the post.

    Please get on board with a legitimate criticism, or refrain from commenting.

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  9. Anonymous5:11 AM

    This is what I was criticizing:

    "the resemblance remains between Obama's rhetoric and the vision of Joachim of Fiore. The theologian and cardinal Henri De Lubac would have had no difficulty in adding Obama to the crowded ranks of the "Spiritual posterity of Joachim of Fiore," "

    IMHO this is nonsense. There is nothing Joachimite about Obama any more than about Bush, Sarkozy, Cameron or whoever.

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  10. Anonymous, I wish you would identify yourself.

    I see what you object to now. You think that I'm claiming that there is something in Joachim de Fiore about Obama. Hence, you reply, quite rightly, that this is nonsense. As you say: "There is nothing Joachimite about Obama any more than about Bush, Sarkozy, Cameron or whoever."

    Where do I claim such nonsense? The passage you quote says: "... the resemblance remains between Obama's rhetoric and the vision of Joachim of Fiore. The theologian and cardinal Henri De Lubac would have had no difficulty in adding Obama to the crowded ranks of the 'Spiritual posterity of Joachim of Fiore'" (emphasis added).

    Notice the words in bold. What I'm claiming is a "resemblance" between their ways of thinking, their respective visions (of history and the future), not that Joachim ever said anything about Obama, which would be impossible since Obama wasn't born in the 12th century last time I checked.

    Further, notice my statement that De Lubac would have no trouble adding Obama to the crowded ranks of the spiritual posterity of Joachim. "Posterity" means "offspring" or "descendants." What I'm saying is that Obama's way of thinking, his vision of how the past must be overcome through a new vision of the future, resembles that of Joachim, and that, therefore, Joachim could be viewed as a "spiritual" descendant of Joachim. I'm not claiming that Obama was directly influenced by Joachim, since Obama may not even have heard of Joachim. But that doesn't prevent Obama from having a vision that in some interesting ways resembles that of Joachim.

    Do you follow what I'm saying now, my friend?

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