On Signs of Contradiction

There are truths which truly must either be accepted or rejected, such as the existence of God.  If you are willing to be convinced by the evidence, you shall be. If you are unwilling, all the evidence in the world would be in vain. If you are open to proofs (not proof, not certainty, but evidence, proofs) of the existence of God, you shall come to believe. If your philosophical framework precludes the existence of the supernatural in certain ways, then if God himself should appear before you, speak to you, and offer you undeniable proof of his existence--you might still turn away, saying, "...You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato."

There are some signs of contradiction in this world which force a decision, and people on either side of the question may gaze across the divide in puzzlement at each other--the one side astounded that anyone with an open mind could remain unconvinced, and the other side, like the Dwarves of Lewis's The Last Battle, sitting in a circle in the middle of Aslan's country, blind to splendor and rich food and drink, determined "not to be taken in. The Dwarves are for the Dwarves."

One such sign of contradiction is Peter. Another--the saints:

In 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn walked through Paris, bearing the scars of his years in the Gulag. He was a sign of contradiction against the intellectuals who were toying with Marxism without having to pay the price it exacted in the real world. One student at the Sorbonne said that in the few weeks Solzhenitsyn was with them, he exposed the superficiality of their existence. But many continued in their self-absorbed world of illusion.

So it was when Pope Benedict went to the United Kingdom. The media described a looming disaster, and the vitriol against the Pope shocked any fair-minded person. Even sympathetic voices said the trip should be cancelled, rather the way Peter tried to block the path of Jesus to Jerusalem. The singularly uninformed Roger Cohen of the New York Times speculated: "It remains to be seen whether a service Friday in Westminster Abbey, where the coronation of Henry VIII and Catherine was held, can ease tensions. I doubt it."

The tremendous success of the papal trip converted many, and puzzled others, but there remain those who will not be persuaded "if someone should rise from the dead." Like a bad weather forecaster, they will blithely continue with no mention of their hollow predictions. Some said the Pope should be denied "the honor of a state visit." In retrospect, it was the Pope who honored the land he visited, and we can adapt what Punch said when Blessed John Henry Newman was created a cardinal: "'Tis the good and great head that would honor the Hat. Not the Hat that would honor the head."