All Saints Day

It is very late in the game, as most of us know, and my work has drawn to a close, everything set

in place. Reflections, though, are in order. In the frame of the books of epic-criticism I sounded a

few things about the time and the end of things, and what I perceive as the current situation of

the church and the world will be my starting point for what I will now write. Postmodernism has

been a time of the seeming attempt to restore traditions, a conservative time politically and

theologically, but also a corrupt time, morally and financially. I think we need to look back a few

decades to solve the puzzle. Heidegger said that Nazism was great because it was about the

confrontation of man and technology. And I believe this was somewhat correct. Postmodernism

is founded on the fascist. It is both politically conservative, morally nihilistic, and

technologically adept. The Third Reich did not cease, but was transformed post 1945, and lives

on in the anti-liberal, anti-enlightenment forces that are stressing freedom and covertly preparing

totalitarianism, at the same time. The Berlin-Rome axis did not die, and I mean this in the sense

of the unfortunate Catholic Church, which is a means of the magical projection of fascism to our

world today. It was a kind of alchemy. The more Catholic the country, it seems, the more

corrupt. Mafia in Italy, drug cartels and death squads in Latin America. As I said, conservative,

immoral, technological. It is a fascinating matrix. To this we add magic, from Harry Potter, to

Borges and Garcia Marquez, to the atrocities done in Juarez, sacrifices to an evil god. A magical,

technological, conservative and drastically corrupt world. Deconstructionists try in their texts to

say, well, it was always this way. Perhaps. But I think the modern world that once was was in

principle opposed to this fascist en-framing. The net seems inescapable. Even friends criticize

me harshly for not setting-up my voice mail on my cell phone, for wanting to be

incommunicado. There is tremendous pressure on all sides to conform to the paradigm of fascist

fashion which is now technological. I do not think most people realize that technology is the

implementation of the fascist. And I do not define fascist narrowly, to the tea party, for instance,

but broadly to include the whole of culture and politics, finance and technology. I believe all of

this bears down on the church and the world as an overwhelming attempt to destroy not men and

cities and nations with armies, but the souls of individuals, by the annihilation of faith, hope and

love. The “they” by this I know not whom or where or what. True tragedy cannot be pinned on

anyone in particular. That is what makes it a tragedy. Tragedies are different though from case to

case, play to play. Hamlet succeeds where Macbeth fails. Lear perhaps succeeds despite

appearances, being reunited with his daughter, in love, despite the pain. We, too, must love,

despite the pains, the cares, the pleasures, all the temptations that would lead us not to believe,

not to hope, not to love. Be ready. As Hamlet. Be ripe. Like Lear. The tragedy cannot be averted,

but it can be overcome, transformed, and love still triumph. The modernist was nothing if not

critical. That makes me modern. The postmodernist is theoretical, but not very critical.

Epicriticism means to discern. I hope the work has helped you to discern your time and place. I

did this in an indirect way, reading old books, reviving an old idea like dialectical thinking, while

juxtaposing pieces written on my own life, creating a work on my life and times, at once both

historical and critical, sometimes almost scholarly, but at the same time prophetic and

apocalyptic. If these are indeed the last days, my work may be too little, too late. But what will

be we do not know, except that scripture says that God will defeat all his enemies and that the

saints will make it to the New Jerusalem, if they remain written in the book of life. I hope you

and you and you are, that we all may be, when God is all in all. On behalf of my wife, Marinela,

I thank you for taking the time to patiently read this. We have prayed for all of you, and we have

worked together for all of you, that some of you may still be saved. The rest is God’s. That God

will not lead us any where he will not provide for us, that God does the impossible, but that God

requires something from us, perhaps something different from each, or perhaps the same, has

been my guiding thoughts in this year of completion. Whatever our vocation is, it is God-given,

and we must do it. Each of us has a vocation, whether we know it or not. In a sense, it may

simply to be alive today. Though we come at the end, we may still reap what others sowed, and

receive the same just, generous reward. Do not doubt God’s mercy or His heaven. And do not

doubt that if you hold out to the end you will win.

I want to speak at the last, really after time ended, about modernism and postmodernism in terms

of the man who is perhaps the greatest modernist, Immanuel Kant, and the man who is perhaps

the poster boy for the postmodern age, John Paul II. In that collection of homilies known as the

theology of the body, in the long introduction to that work, it is said that the Pope, sitting at

sumptuous table with guests in the ornate and extravagant Vatican, would exclaim upon hearing

the name of the philosopher Kant. I think with good reason, which I hope to elucidate. For the

sake of argument, we could say that modernism was a most pure philosophy, and that

postmodernism is a most impure philosophy. For reasons I refer to all that I have written

hitherto. The opposition of Kant and John Paul II is essential. I have heard a religious who was

teaching at a catholic university, without question and I think with deliberation, misrepresent

Kant’s philosophy, twisting it all out of shape. When I attempted a correction, I was stopped by

the fascist force the nuns use sometimes against anyone who questions them or opposes them.

The same is true of the Catholic hierarchy. They will not allow dialogue, criticism, or any

difference of opinion. But, time brings correction, as Benedict once said, and thank God, we may

still have a little. How are we to understand the Kantian project in terms of today? The

philosopher made a critique of pure and practical reason, eliminating the transcendent as

unknowable, but founding morals on the categorical imperative. The religious I spoke of denied

the basic principle of Kant stated in his theory of the transcendental, that we all have certain

forms we all think in, and therefore we are similar and able to communicate with each other. We

are not similar to God, as the Catholics claim in the analogy of being, but similar to each other,

in our existence in the categories and in space and time. To continue Kant today, by my

renovation of Hegelian dialectic and the refutation of Derrida’s deconstruction, I have presented

a new kind of critique of reason, not one of the pure and the practical, but of the general and the

particular, and this as early as my writings on Wordsworth in the 1990s, when the poet denied

the destructive analysis in favor of what he called the grand and simple reason, what may be

called the imagination. In my logic I have shown the particular reason as having become

completely fragmented and destructive, completely contradictory. I think John Paul II would say

this is a direct result of Kantian modernism, and perhaps he would be right. But Wordsworth was

more right, in arguing forward into the high ground of imagination, not back into dogmatic

retreat, which was a cover for a subterfuge. The reconciliation of the great fragmentation in

particular reason, seen prominently in the American politics of the last thirty years, and

incorrectly blamed on the media, which is but a mirror, not the cause of the contradiction, comes

through a theory that is grand and simple and imaginative in a general reason that forgives

contradiction, that affirms all, not by perpetuating conflict, but like Kant, through a prayer for a

reasonable religion and an eternal peace. The way up is the way down. All is one. God alone is.

Be perfect, which means not to set no limits to love, but rather release judgment and the power to

judge, giving to God what is God’s, and letting the world be as it is, and the church as it is,

forgiving all particular sins and errors, the mistakes of an impure logic, by a general attitude of

love and forgiveness. We see this in the imperative of Kant, which says, basically, perform your

actions as if everyone would repeat the actions you make. Which is very different from

Nietzsche’s repetition. It is an imaginative forward moral thought. In all, it is the rule of the

symbolic life, which you and I both lead, though you may or may not recognize it as I do. Since

these things have been: Would that all God’s people were prophets, as Moses said. And as Joel

said, God will pour out his Spirit on all people, the old men shall dream, and the young men shall

see visions. And as Peter quoted the latter on Pentecost, the Biblical footnotes say it is

accomplished, the thing Moses and Joel and Peter said. The Spiritual life is a prophetic and

symbolic life, and what we do is, I think, truly repeated by others in a way we know not. Charles

Baudelaire spoke of a mystical correspondence as does the Kabbalah. At any rate, what we do,

what we say, and what we think, matters in ways we do not know, but which is commented on in

theories in physics, the so-called “chaos” theory, and in psychology’s so-called “synchronicity.”

Everything belongs, as Richard Rohr said. Everything belongs in the theory of general reason,

and everything then respires with meaning, as Wordsworth’s mystical and moral poetry stated in

a sentiment some mistakenly thought was natural. The postmodern deconstruction of meaning,

that took place through the proliferation of the text, is overcome by an acceptance of personal

responsibility for our actions that will reverse the corrupt financialization of all aspects of life

which is the value of technology. Meaning is not purchased, it is made, and we make meaning

through our actions, which some wish to be meaningless, but which in the eyes of God, are all

infinitely important, as the Kantian categorical imperative said in its own terms. He saw us in

relation to everyone else, as our explication, while postmodernism implicates us in its tainted

love, sin without sense. “Sin without sense” is the violence of the age, the fruit of fascism, in a

time when the words “crazy” and “evil” are used with free substitution to describe what has

happened from Hitler to Juarez, 1945 to 2010. Madness, which Plato said was sometimes a very

good thing, is implicated with evil, which can never be good, through the taint of the postmodern

logic, eliminating the possibility of great love and what may be called the great divine love that

is the madness the saints showed, in order to destroy love itself, which, to be the real thing, must

look to all the world just plain crazy. This confusion of “madness,” which my logic may be

pejoratively termed, with an “evil” not crazy, violates the principle of principles of the general

reason: The pure must be preserved, without a trace of the other. The Immaculate Conception,

the IC, as Derrida uses it in Glas, is purely opposed to the taint of it, IT (and it may well be

summed by “information technology”), as Epicriticism shows in the title of the work, in which

IC surrounds IT and limits it, through a different kind of repetition, one may say of the prayer of

the heart, or as my wife says, by devotion. The two ways of repetition are thus disclosed: The

rosary of supplication against the replication of the replication alone; one mindful of devotion,

the other one devoted but to mindlessness. With so many of us paying so much attention, how

could the end of things happen and go unnoticed? It is an old saying, we could not see the forest

for the trees. With the flood of information, somehow this, combined with the lack of prophetic

insight, as opposed to historical or scholarly, or political and financial, wisdoms, has led to the

situation. The triumph of wealth, the triumph of technology, the return of triumphalism in

theology, the triumph of life, as the poet would say, in all its glare and would-be glory, a great

vehicle crushing all opposed to it, or even just caught in the path of the career of it, all this really

Roman and essentially Empiric triumph, spectacle, done for show, for semblance, and not really

fooling anyone, but gladly welcomed as the escape from reason and reality, has been the recipe

for the disaster of the evacuation of faith, hope and love, for the eclipse of the light of the world,

the opposite of the preparation for the gospel some thought it might be. My work is written in

antithesis to this, attempting a synthesis from the debris. That I may be wrong in my elucidation

of the time, I must admit. That the logic I have found may not work, I must admit. But that the

world is in deep trouble, I think we all must admit. I hope you will concede that we all have the

responsibility, given the opportunity, to suggest a solution to what has become a global problem,

involving the fate of all. That my solution involves great contradictions, and yet is simple, is the

strength of it. Against the complexity of the Gordian knot of postmodernism I use a gospel

sword, the word of truth, and built my work, after its false, but fortunate, start in the abyss, by

adhering to scripture and synthesizing it with what I found in the best and most useful aspects of

the wisdoms I have read and known and lived. This dialectic may yet provide a way out by not

the use of force against the knot, nor yet by yielding to the seductions of complexity, but by

patient description and explanation, and even, I hope, a telling disclosure of truth. Having over

the course of time, with patience, in my search for truth, straightened-out both dialectic and

deconstruction, and finally turned to Kant and reconstructed the first two critiques, of pure and

practical reason, along the lines of the general and the particular reason, I now wish to turn to the

third critique, that of judgment. Kant writes of the beautiful and the sublime, and of teleology, so

it is appropriate to say the matter concerning judgment in the context of the end of things and our

finality, that is, the Day of Judgment, the great day, the awesome and terrible day of the Lord.

Having transposed reason from the pure and practical to the general and particular, let us

likewise transpose the critique of judgment into a clear and precise, up-to-date definition of what

in Christian theology are known as the particular and the general judgments. It may be the

former is what we all expect, that we will be judged according to our works, our words, what we

did and did not do, what we did for the least among us and what we did not, what we did for

Christ, and what we did not. Scripture says it is so. According to our torturous particular reasons

it could not be otherwise, as human thinking shows. But the Lord has said plainly again and

again that He does not think like we do. The general reason that I have suggested is the closest

we can come, at least that I can come, to understanding the absolute Mind of Christ, reconciling

oppositions, forgiving enemies, justifying sinners. And so I believe the general judgment will be

according to the general reason. It will be pardon, amnesty, forgiveness. Though we as

individuals may have been sunk deep in the abyss of sin, the whole man, the human race, will

stand united as one on the Day of Judgment, and we will all be forgiven, as one. It is the

unification of the beauty of holy forgiveness with the terror and sublimity of the infinite power of

God, together with a true understanding of the telos. With this prophetic hope the logic ends.

Thus, the logic ends, pointing to something over the horizon, while within the world and within

the church the task of love remains. What is this task? Paul said that faith, and hope, and love,

these three remain, but that the greatest of these is love. I appeal to hope in the resolution of the

logic and the working through of Kant’s critiques of reason and judgment, but what of the thing-

in-itself, that is, criticism, as such? For what we know is the way we know. If we know

dogmatically, and if we know critically, these are very different things. In the work now ending,

I argued for a faithful criticism and a critical faith. I think both dogmatic catholic theology of the

postmodern era and the dogmatic theory of deconstruction are more like each other than has been

supposed, because both are equally far from criticism, and deny it in practice, not tolerating it,

nor dialogue, nor the inviolability of the conscience, but rather insisting on the necessity of the

positions held by popes and professors. The conscience in its integrity preached by the Second

Vatican Council must be critical, so as to be faithful to the message of the gospel, just as the

philosopher must be critical in order to be faithful to the commitment to truth above all else. In

an age when people deny that any truth still exists, or that the dogmatic position of one pope or

professor or party, people or nation, economy or religion, is the one answer, the whole truth, it

means that our time has dissipated thought in particular reasons, better known as rationalizations,

rather than reach and take hold of truth itself, that is to allow oneself to live in it, abide in it, love

it, instead of manipulating it, for politics, advertising, money, power, prestige and the appearance

of the glamorous which is not glory, but is the death knell of beauty, good and truth. That we had

a glamorous pope is a shame. That the destructiveness of the death written of by deconstruction

became the definition of glamour is a shame. Faithful criticism stands outside the circularity of

dogmatic positions, all particular, and stands in relation to the general reason, which is not to be

seen in terms of the so-called general economy of postmodernism, opposed to restricted

dialectic, but which is simply the standpoint that faith-criticism reaches by patience, love and

hope. It is not a hopeless contamination and juxtaposition of any and all, but a discernment,

beginning with the basic moral opposition of good and evil, which leads truly to the mystical

love dogmatism promises but cannot deliver, because the dogmatic man is a tyrant, and loves no

one in truth, but his own. They stand in particular against all the others, whom we know we are

to love. Catholicism and Christianity to fulfill their mission must give up the special for the

general, and love everyone. That political parties do not do this is perhaps understandable, but

that the heirs of the gospel do not do this is a sin, not to mention the many particular sins of

which many now stand accused, even at the highest levels. That capital will not give itself away

is perhaps understandable, but that the riches of the church, which are not found in the Vatican

but in the Bible and on the altar of the heart, have not begun to be disclosed after two thousand

years, what are we to make of this? You say, but the gospel is preached to all nations.

Dogmatism is theory, but faith-criticism is practice. The church and the world criticize each

other, but only from their particular points-of-view, that is generally not in good faith. They act

like political parties, who agree to disagree, and profit off each other in a mutual economy of

implication. In order to hold on to faith in the church and the world today one will need to learn

to think, discern, be critical, and be faithful to the one thing necessary. Call that one thing what

you will, it matters not, but when He calls, you must respond faithfully, even if it breaks you,

breaks your church, breaks your world. As bread is broken, be broken, too. To not be too

sentimental about this breaking, let us lay it all on the head of that one man Nietzsche, who was

broken, as perhaps we all must be. There was Nietzsche, simply, on the square, and then

dogmatically, we would have an anti-Nietzsche, which most good people since 1900, if they

think about it, must suppose themselves to be, and then there is Nietzsche-otherwise, the

Heideggerean, Derridean, postmodern appropriation of Nietzsche. But you know my logic. What

is Nietzsche in the fourth place? How does Nietzsche arrive? His basic doctrines, Heidegger

cogently said, were the will to power and the eternal recurrence, which Heidegger made into “the

will wills itself.” But this is not Nietzsche as fourth, rather Nietzsche returned. What is the

arrival of the will to power, of the will that wills itself? Not that willing of power, and nothing

besides, but rather, and I might say merely, a willingness. Willingness. It is more “other” than

the Other, than will to power itself, than an anti- or an otherwise-than-Nietzsche, and is his

proper breaking, the breaking of the postmodern, through a simple, humble thing summed by

that word “willingness.” Not by assertion or negation. Not by reason, either dogmatic or skeptic,

or even critical. Nor by indifference, the position of the amoral most congenial to Nietzsche, but

by the willingness itself. Willingness to let go, to suffer, to be humiliated, to be broken. Christ

did not will his crucifixion, but accepted it willingly. And there is all the difference between

Christ’s practice and Nietzsche’s theory. Therefore, you may confidently hope that if you are

willing, yes, you may yet be saved. Willingness is not the same as obedience, though it is often

confused with it. It puts the glory of another ahead of itself, not as commanded, but out of love,

out of confidence, in a courage that destroys even death, overcoming it not by willing

nothingness, nor by not willing at all, but by willing as one is willing to love and be loved. It is

our marriage. Blake spoke of the marriage of heaven and hell, while Derrida spoke of perfecting

the resemblance of Dionysus and Christ. I choose neither option. I do not choose the one offered

by the poet. I do not choose the one offered by the philosopher. To choose these seems not to

reconcile oppositions, but to entangle all things in webs without end. It would be a violent

yoking together of things that must be kept discrete. Discretion recommends a better course. Let

us say there is a marriage, to which we are all invited. It behooves us to attend the wedding of the

Bride and the Lamb. We cannot feign important engagements elsewhere. On the day the world

ends, if it has not already ended, there is only one place to be, and that is at the wedding. But

recall, many were invited, but one did not have the proper attire, and so was cast out. I think we

better bring an offering of some kind at least. I think it a spiritual truth that God has given gifts

and talents to all, and that he expects us to not neglect these, but to increase them, as one might

these days strive to enhance wealth. However, I believe, the gifts of God are not always known

to us, and we spend our whole lives searching for the thing we are to do. I was lucky. From an

early age I was born to write, and that was about the only thing I did. I loved and was loved,

prayed, and made friends, held a few unsteady jobs, piled up great unpaid debts, all the while I

wrote. It frightens me to think God in his absolute freedom may tell me that I got it all wrong,

that I was really meant to do some other thing, ordinary or extraordinary, and that I missed the

boat, missed my chance, do not get off the merry-go-round, but must go around at least one more

time, if I am to be given an additional chance. God has mercy on whom He will. We work out

our destinies in salvation history with fear and trembling, but also with joy and hope, as the

council fathers said, and it is the union of these contraries that are the attitudes we bring to the

wedding day, tomorrow, for which we may be shown mercy.

Michael Bolerjack