Simply, the Catholic and Gnostic views of materiality are, respectively, Good and Evil, which engender hope and despair. It is paradoxical that the modern adoration of materiality in the form of technology should be concurrent and compatible with the Gnostic regard of materiality as evil. If we take the material and its pleasures as a god, we are quickly faced with the question of ennui and despair, ‘Is that all there is?’ However, the despair of Gnosticism is worse than that of mere idolatry. It is blasphemy. It sees created matter, not as the ultimate good as does idolatry. It sees created matter as evil. It is blasphemy to say what God has created is evil. Though a lesser evil, idolizing matter in its limited goodness can be a prelude to Gnosticism.
The Catholic View of Material Idolatry
We often think of the Catholic opposition to the world, the flesh, and the devil as opposition to and denigration of material reality. But, it is not so. The Catholic view recognizes the world and the flesh as good in themselves, but limited in beauty, goodness, truth, and existence. The Catholic opposition is not to such beauty, but to making it our end in its limited existence. It is opposition to our wanting solely something, which leads to despair, rather than our wanting All, who yields infinite beatitude.
A Portrayal of Idolatry
Artists help us to understand material reality more clearly, not by our direct contemplation of nature, but by our appreciation of nature in its portrayal through artistic emphasis. Eugene O’Neil’s play, The Iceman Cometh, portrays the despair of material idolatry in the middle of the twentieth century. Life’s promise of happiness is a fraud. Pleasure is transient. Our seeking of happiness is constantly frustrated. One escape from the bleakness of life is drunkenness, but it too, is transient. The only true escape from the idolatry of matter, is suicide. In his youth, O’Neil lived the life of the proverbial drunken sailor. He suffered from depression and alcoholism all his life.
Material Idolatry Yields to Gnosticism as the Culture of Death
In the last fifty years, the despair of material idolatry has been yielding to the despair of Gnosticism. Gnosticism identifies material reality not as the idolatrous source of human happiness, but rather as evil in itself. It is quite poignantly identified as the culture of death.
In the creation of material reality by God in the first chapter of Genesis, God calls material creation ‘good’ seven times.
In the perennial philosophy, it is evident that the existence of each human being depends upon matter as the source of his individual identity and thereby his very existence. God could not create a human being without matter. Each human is neither a body nor a soul, but a composite of body and soul. In Ephesians 5:29, St. Paul notes that “No one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it”. Each of us exists in our personal identity, via the identity of our matter.
Yet, the essential goodness of matter is compatible with our suffering through matter. In Adam and in our personal sins, we rebel against the love of God for us. Consequently, our emotions instead of prompting us solely to do good, are in revolt against us. Adam and we are no longer in sync with our environment, “Cursed be the ground because of you!” (Gen 3:17). God’s response is to redeem us through created flesh, through his own incarnation.
The crowning glory of matter is the Incarnation, “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (Jn. 1:14) It is matter, which makes possible God’s becoming man and redeeming us through his human flesh. We receive Divine Grace through matter in the Mass and the other sacraments. In the Eucharist, God shows that he cannot wait until our death to be intimately united with us. “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.” (Is 49:15)
The Modern View of Creation
The modern view is that we are creators of reality. “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” It is not that liberty is the right to freely discover the meaning of existence, the universe, and the mystery of life. The modern view of liberty is the right and the power to define and thereby create meaning in meaningless matter.
This is a task beyond human power. It is God that defines and identifies all material things in their very natures in the act of bringing them into existence.
A Tragic Instance of the Despair of Gnosticism
One aspect of the Gnostic foundation of the culture of death is the current belief that our bodies may not correspond to our personal identity, particularly in our biological sexuality. The evil of materiality is evidenced in this error, according to the Gnostic view.
Recently, a youth convinced of this particular error of materiality expressed his conviction in the words, “I feel like I’m in a box, I am in the wrong place.” Although he was encouraged by his parents and had initiated the process of being transgendered, he could not endure the oppression of his materiality. This feeling may have been even more acute due to his interest in the arts, which makes our view of life even more poignant. The evening before taking his own life, he said, “I feel trapped. This is not happening enough for me.” Gnosticism, in this instance, convinced its victim that he was a soul imprisoned in a body, that the only full escape from the evil of matter was suicide.
There is hope, not only that our culture should see the goodness and beauty of matter, but that this youth will be in the presence of the Beatific Vision and be graced with the resurrection of his body at the end of time. By grace, God may have presented to him Christ’s Incarnational beauty and love in all its materiality. Let us pray that this youth perceived and accepted the materiality of Christ and his own materiality with joy, just before his death. May he, thereby, rest in peace.
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