The Platonism in Lewis' writing is not exactly concealed (check the Professor's refrain, "It's all in Plato" in The Last Battle), and nor does it seem to me at all dangerous - unless you reckon St.Augustine and Pope Benedict XVI dangerous. Platonism is, if not connaturate to the Christian religion (Irenaeus of Lyons and Thomas Aquinas, to quote only two giants, were not Platonists), at least a "recognized party". And I think that the essay you quote pushes the issue of Lewis' "barbs" against Catholicism much too far. For instance, about the passage about devotions to Saints, what Lewis has to say is nothing more than what many Catholic reformers have said down the years, indeed what the Vatican itself has backed by outlawing a number of outlandish devotions and derubricating several unhistorical saints. (If only they had got rid of the euhemerized pagan goddess St.Bridget!) As for the relevance of Tolkien's dislike of some features of Lewis' thought, while I appreciate (and indeed mentioned) the importance of "the ulsterior motive" in assessing Lewis' allegiances, nonetheless you have to remember that Tolkien was a very partisan kind of Catholic: a supporter of Franco, an avowed opponent of democracy, and a man who carried in his bones the rage of seeing his mother literally die of malnutrition because of the stone-hearted rejection by her Protestant relations. His Catholicism was considerably more partisan and exclusive than that of, say, GK Chesterton; almost to the point of being sectarian. Incredibly, he was not only pained by CS Lewis' refusal to support Franco in the Spanish Civil war - in which Lewis took the only possible course, damning both sides as tyrannical and vicious - but he actualy ascribed it to Lewis' supposed anti-Catholic prejudice, as if the only reason to disapprove of military tyranny and subversion were religious prejudice. Did Tolkien even realize that he was practically defending Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon?
I remain unconvinced over Lewis and his ulsterism. To ascribe a negative prejudice to his decision, or rather non-decision, to become a Catholic seems to assume that the Anglican Church could not accomodate his beliefs. More than any other the Anglican Church is a broad church, containing as it does functional athiests right through to high-church 'catholics' whose differences with the Catholic Church are minimal. If a return to the church of his youth accomodated his beliefs, then why would he change?
And I woulde reject utterly your assertion that Lewis came from the same community which gave rise to the Black & Tans. Lewis came from a very different class and indeed country. The Black & Tans were not recruited from Ireland as a whole or Ulster in particular, they came mainly from England and were drawn from those who had no other opportunities after their return from the war. Indeed many were alleged to have come from jails, or to have selected 'service' over prison when before the courts. Not at all similar to Lewis' middle-class background.
That being said, I'm afriad Irish History is the subject which has caused me to distrust almost all history. I have seen, in my lifetime, a total rewriting of the history of events over the last 100 years. A process that continues to this day, especially over events over the past thirty years. Events that I lived through, that my parents and grandparents lived through have been denied or warped. If similar changes and, on occasions, outright distortions occur in other areas, then it is difficult to treat any history as anything other than fiction.
I take your corrections about Irish history, the more so as I have written my article on Fascism exactly to challenge the same kind of politically motivated rewriting of recent history of my own country which you decry. My basic point was, I know who and what Fascists are - incredibly, I have even had Fascist friends. So I regard Mr.Goldberg's thesis as an imposition. About the Black and Tans, I generalized from the life history of William Joyce, the man who became Lord Haw-Haw, who certainly was an Irishman, fought in WWI, and became a Black and Tan. All his later politics were dictated by his embitterment in the years that followed the war. My point was not that Lewis would ever have become a Black and Tan - I agree that his upper-middle class background would not have agreed with becoming a cheap pseudo-soldier - but that he came from a group which essentially had their own country taken away from them about 1922. Lewis described himself as an "Irishman" (not an "ulsterman", a definition he associated with sectarianism) to the end of his life, and while his swift entrance into Oxford gave him opportunities that less fortunate loyalists may not have had, we cannot imagine that the transformation of three-quarters of his fatherland into a foreign country did not affect him; the more so as he met Coghill there, with his stories of IRA brutality. He said himself that he had "been taught from the cradle never to trust a Catholic", and that meeting with such men as Tolkien and Dr.Havard had been a real revelation. And may I say, I have met a few Anglicans and a few Protestants in my life. When I come across someone who gives as much value to the first part of the Scriptural injunction to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" as to the second, "for it is God Who works within you", and indeed makes it one of his most frequent quotations; who does not like hymns; who believes in Purgatory; who is conscientious about the details of the sacrament of marriage to the point of lawyerliness; who regards the Eucharist as the holiest thing you will ever encounter, transcending human reason; who has the highest possible regard for the priesthood, and not only for the Anglican but for the Catholic priesthood (read his correspondence with Don Giovanni Calabria); and who seems to pattern himself after GK Chesterton - well, I think I have some reason to ask, Why are you not Catholic?
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And I woulde reject utterly your assertion that Lewis came from the same community which gave rise to the Black & Tans. Lewis came from a very different class and indeed country. The Black & Tans were not recruited from Ireland as a whole or Ulster in particular, they came mainly from England and were drawn from those who had no other opportunities after their return from the war. Indeed many were alleged to have come from jails, or to have selected 'service' over prison when before the courts. Not at all similar to Lewis' middle-class background.
That being said, I'm afriad Irish History is the subject which has caused me to distrust almost all history. I have seen, in my lifetime, a total rewriting of the history of events over the last 100 years. A process that continues to this day, especially over events over the past thirty years. Events that I lived through, that my parents and grandparents lived through have been denied or warped. If similar changes and, on occasions, outright distortions occur in other areas, then it is difficult to treat any history as anything other than fiction.
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