Opinion: Magdi Cristiano Allam and CS Lewis, ‘Man with a Chest’ Leads
By Deacon Keith Fournier
12/2/2008
Catholic Online
"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise" Magdi Cristiano Allam is a man with a chest in an age of retreat
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - I recently reported on the formation of a new political Party in Europe called “Protagonists for Christian Europe”. It is committed to promoting and defending Europe’s Christian values and rebuilding a culture of life upon them. Magdi Allam, the Italian Journalist and Muslim convert to the Catholic faith who received the Sacraments of Initiation at the hands of Pope Benedict XVI during the Easter Vigil, is the founder of the effort. The more I read his thought which is animating this effort the more I am impressed with him and convinced of the need for a similar effort in the United States.
Magdi Allam took the name “Cristiano” when he was baptized - and he has lived up to it ever since. He states clearly that it is the Christian values upon which Europe was founded which are the path to true and authentic freedom for all men and women. He knows that these very values are under a fierce assault by the forces of secularism and moral relativism. That is why he is speaking out with such courage and putting himself at risk. He gives an example to all who know that what he is saying is true. We cannot simply wring our hands over the current state of affairs.
Magdi Allam re-proposes timeless truths afresh to all who will listen. In a recent talk to College aged youth he stated "Thanks to Christianity, I understood that truth is the other side of liberty: They are an indissoluble binomial. The phrase, 'The truth will make you free' is a principle that you young people should always keep in mind, especially today when; scorning the truth, freedom is relinquished." He continued "The second indissoluble binomial in Christianity is without a doubt that of faith and reason. This second element is capable of giving substance to our humanity, the sacredness of life, respect for human dignity and the freedom of religious choice."
Allam credits the Holy Father's 2006 speech in Regensburg with helping him to see it all so clearly. "An event, before my conversion, made me think more than other events: the Pope's discourse in Regensburg. On that occasion, citing the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, he affirmed something that the Muslims themselves have never denied: that Islam spreads the faith above all with the sword. There is a greater and more subliminal danger than the terrorism of 'cut-throats.' It is the terrorism of the 'cut-tongues,' that is, the fear of affirming and divulging our faith and our civilization, and it brings us to auto-censorship and to deny our values, putting everything - and the contrary to everything - on the same plane.”
Making such comments when he has been the subject of death threats simply shows what we used to call the “mettle of the man”. Magdi cristiano is a man of courage. In 1947, one of the great Christian writers of the Second Millennium, C.S. Lewis addressed the decline of his beloved Britain. He warned of the subjective and relativist trends in the British educational system and reasserted the timeless moral truths of Christianity. Lewis called for a return to the classical Christian vision of the human person and the cultivation of virtues as the path to true human flourishing and freedom. He defined “the chest” in this work as the “higher emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments or character.” He wrote that without this “chest”, men and women devolve into self idolatry losing their human dignity and true freedom. They become slaves to disordered appetites.
The West is a mess, just as Lewis warned. With its decline we face the eclipse of true freedom. Lewis’ words in this book are timely: “And all the time – such is the tragicomedy of our situation – we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive,’ or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity.’ In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
Magdi Cristiano Allam is a man with a chest. He stands out because this is an age of men (and women) without chests, an age of retreat. When I read of his public witness to his Catholic Christian faith in spite of death threats and his willingness to do the hard work necessary to help stem the decline of the West by building a new Political Party, I remembered my mother. What, my reader may ask, does his mother have to do with all of this? She would often ask when kids had done only the “bare minimum” of basic chores and then sought a reward of some sort: “What do you want, a medal or a chest to pin it on?”
Magdi Cristiano Allam has a big courageous chest and he should get a medal! He is precisely the kind of Christian so needed in our own day. Hopefully, his example will inspire many more men (and women) with chests in this new missionary age for the Church. In the “Mission of the Redeemer”, another man with a huge chest, the great late Servant of God John Paul II wrote these words,
“I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Church's energies to a new evangelization and to the mission “ad gentes”. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples…. I see the dawning of a new missionary age, which will become a radiant day bearing an abundant harvest, if all Christians, and missionaries and young churches in particular, respond with generosity and holiness to the calls and challenges of our time." (Pope John Paul II, Mission of the Redeemer, 3 and 92)
We are living in this new missionary age right now. Let us reject the “terrorism of the cut tongues” of which Allam warns. Instead let us follow his courageous example and speak the truth which alone can set all men and women free.It is time for Christian courage.
By Deacon Keith Fournier
12/2/2008
Catholic Online
"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise" Magdi Cristiano Allam is a man with a chest in an age of retreat
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - I recently reported on the formation of a new political Party in Europe called “Protagonists for Christian Europe”. It is committed to promoting and defending Europe’s Christian values and rebuilding a culture of life upon them. Magdi Allam, the Italian Journalist and Muslim convert to the Catholic faith who received the Sacraments of Initiation at the hands of Pope Benedict XVI during the Easter Vigil, is the founder of the effort. The more I read his thought which is animating this effort the more I am impressed with him and convinced of the need for a similar effort in the United States.
Magdi Allam took the name “Cristiano” when he was baptized - and he has lived up to it ever since. He states clearly that it is the Christian values upon which Europe was founded which are the path to true and authentic freedom for all men and women. He knows that these very values are under a fierce assault by the forces of secularism and moral relativism. That is why he is speaking out with such courage and putting himself at risk. He gives an example to all who know that what he is saying is true. We cannot simply wring our hands over the current state of affairs.
Magdi Allam re-proposes timeless truths afresh to all who will listen. In a recent talk to College aged youth he stated "Thanks to Christianity, I understood that truth is the other side of liberty: They are an indissoluble binomial. The phrase, 'The truth will make you free' is a principle that you young people should always keep in mind, especially today when; scorning the truth, freedom is relinquished." He continued "The second indissoluble binomial in Christianity is without a doubt that of faith and reason. This second element is capable of giving substance to our humanity, the sacredness of life, respect for human dignity and the freedom of religious choice."
Allam credits the Holy Father's 2006 speech in Regensburg with helping him to see it all so clearly. "An event, before my conversion, made me think more than other events: the Pope's discourse in Regensburg. On that occasion, citing the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, he affirmed something that the Muslims themselves have never denied: that Islam spreads the faith above all with the sword. There is a greater and more subliminal danger than the terrorism of 'cut-throats.' It is the terrorism of the 'cut-tongues,' that is, the fear of affirming and divulging our faith and our civilization, and it brings us to auto-censorship and to deny our values, putting everything - and the contrary to everything - on the same plane.”
Making such comments when he has been the subject of death threats simply shows what we used to call the “mettle of the man”. Magdi cristiano is a man of courage. In 1947, one of the great Christian writers of the Second Millennium, C.S. Lewis addressed the decline of his beloved Britain. He warned of the subjective and relativist trends in the British educational system and reasserted the timeless moral truths of Christianity. Lewis called for a return to the classical Christian vision of the human person and the cultivation of virtues as the path to true human flourishing and freedom. He defined “the chest” in this work as the “higher emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments or character.” He wrote that without this “chest”, men and women devolve into self idolatry losing their human dignity and true freedom. They become slaves to disordered appetites.
The West is a mess, just as Lewis warned. With its decline we face the eclipse of true freedom. Lewis’ words in this book are timely: “And all the time – such is the tragicomedy of our situation – we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive,’ or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity.’ In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
Magdi Cristiano Allam is a man with a chest. He stands out because this is an age of men (and women) without chests, an age of retreat. When I read of his public witness to his Catholic Christian faith in spite of death threats and his willingness to do the hard work necessary to help stem the decline of the West by building a new Political Party, I remembered my mother. What, my reader may ask, does his mother have to do with all of this? She would often ask when kids had done only the “bare minimum” of basic chores and then sought a reward of some sort: “What do you want, a medal or a chest to pin it on?”
Magdi Cristiano Allam has a big courageous chest and he should get a medal! He is precisely the kind of Christian so needed in our own day. Hopefully, his example will inspire many more men (and women) with chests in this new missionary age for the Church. In the “Mission of the Redeemer”, another man with a huge chest, the great late Servant of God John Paul II wrote these words,
“I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Church's energies to a new evangelization and to the mission “ad gentes”. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples…. I see the dawning of a new missionary age, which will become a radiant day bearing an abundant harvest, if all Christians, and missionaries and young churches in particular, respond with generosity and holiness to the calls and challenges of our time." (Pope John Paul II, Mission of the Redeemer, 3 and 92)
We are living in this new missionary age right now. Let us reject the “terrorism of the cut tongues” of which Allam warns. Instead let us follow his courageous example and speak the truth which alone can set all men and women free.It is time for Christian courage.
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