Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim

I finally found another one! What am I talking about? I'm talking about the Malcolm Muggeridge book that I found at the public library bookstore. I only buy used books, which is a good way of cultivating patience since the delay could be a few years (assuming I don't use Amazon, in which case the delay is only a few days). But the delayed gratification this time was worth it. I had never even heard of Muggeridge's Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim before pulling it down in trembling excitement, my gasp of pleasure sounding loud among the silent shelves.

Muggeridge's autobiographical Confessions was at times merely a collection of quotes, at times a strangely impersonal narrative of his life, at other times a heartfelt cry of prayer. But at all times it was fascinating to read. Opening on the scene of his induction into the Catholic church at an advanced age, the author then turns a backwards glance on the stages of his life that had brought him to that moment. The boy, the teacher, the journalist, the soldier are some of the parts that the Englishman Muggeridge played on a variety of continents and in a variety of countries. While some could fault the almost desultory quotes from Augustine, Solzhenitsen, Simone Weil, among many, and Muggeridge's own philosophical reflections for breaking up the flow of the biography, they were my favorite part. I can't resist copying some of these reflections.

"the pursuit of knowledge without reference to truth which alone gives knowledge its validity" (51).

"The other true purpose of school studies--education--is to inculcate humility--not just a virtue, but the condition of virtue. From this point of view, it is perhaps even more useful to contemplate our stupidity than our sin." --Simone Weil (52).

"In great wealth, great poverty; in health sickness; in numbers, deception. Gorging, left hungry; sedated, left restless... So we press on through the valley of abundance that leads to the wasteland of satiety, passing through the gardens of fantasy; seeking happiness ever more ardently, and finding despair ever more surely" (64).

"Darwinian evolution, a very rickety hypothesis based on some old bones or a tooth discovered in Kenya or Nanking, and infiltrating all the different disciplines of learning, and making an ultimate nonsense of them all" (76).

"Of course, she enjoys the inestimable advantage of never looking at TV, listening to radio or reading the newspapers, and so has a clear notion of what is really going on in the world; the siren-voice of the consensus does not reach her" (136).

Why did Muggeridge become a Catholic? In part at least, "it was the Catholic Church's firm stand against contraception and abortion which finally made me decide to become a Catholic" (140).

Throughout his book there is one recurrent theme, somewhat contradictory to the idea of an autobiography: the theme of humility.

"He set a window in the tiny dark dungeon of the ego in which we all languish, letting in a light, providing a vista, and offering a way of release from the servitude of the flesh and the fury of the will into what St Paul called 'the glorious liberty of the children of God'" (131).

"God, humble my pride, extinguish the last stirrings of my Ego, obliterate whatever remains of worldly ambition and carnality, and help me to serve only Thy purposes, to speak and write only Thy words, to think only Thy thoughts, to have no other prayer than 'Thy will be done'" (75).

And that's a pretty good thought to end with.

Malcolm Muggeridge, Confessions of a Twentieth-Century Pilgrim. San Francisco, Harper and Row Publishers. 1988. Originally: Conversion, A Spiritual Journey

Jan. 22

Jan. 22 is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade I was reminded while perusing some blogs. On Geneveith.com I found this quote from Mother Teresa.

“America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts—a child—as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters.”

I just read a short biography on Thomas Jefferson, so I see the irony particularly strong of a nation that presumably holds to the self-evident truth that all have the inalienable right to LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Today it would seem that the liberty and happiness of some is more important than the life of others.

Something Beautiful for God

How does one write a biography that opens with the statement that it is not a “biography or biographical study?” One way Malcolm Muggeridge does this in Something Beautiful for God, his book on Mother Teresa, is by making it his own quasi memoir of his acquaintance with her. The result is that one knows almost as much about Muggeridge as about Mother Teresa by the end of the book; which isn’t a bad thing.

This English journalist, social critic, and Christian apologist is good reading so far, although this is the first of his books I have read. I found his musings on various peripheral topics to be just as interesting as the way he treats the ostensible subject of the book. On abortion for instance, he says: “either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other” (23). Tying this philosophical fact into the world of Mother Teresa he asserts: “the notion that there could in any circumstances be too many children was, to her, as inconceivable as suggesting that there are too many bluebells in the woods or stars in the sky” (23).

Again, seemingly with the intent of explaining why, as an admirer and writer about Mother Teresa, he is not Catholic, he devotes a disproportionate number of pages in this slim volume to explaining how it is “impossible for me to accept her way of looking at the Church’s present predicament, or to see it as other than an institution which a mortal hierarchy and priesthood can make or mar, sustain or let collapse” (39).

Considered as a biography of Mother Teresa the book is scanty at best, only a minimal outline of her life and daily work among the “poorest of the poor” is given. 50 pages are set apart for devotionals and thoughts from Mother Teresa and a BBC transcript of an interview that Muggeridge conducted (incidentally, the BBC documentary filmed in India by Muggeridge was also called Something Beautiful for God).

Some of Mother Teresa’s wisdom was well worth reading. On the Christian walk: “We must become holy, not because we want to feel holy, but because Christ must be able to live his life fully in us” (47). On blogging (yes, she is very relevant): “the essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us. All our words will be useless unless they come from [him]—words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness” (48).

In case you are wondering who Malcolm Muggeridge is as I once did, consider what Peter Kreeft says about him: “after Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien, there is no one I would rather read than Muggeridge. A Johnny-come-lately convert to Christianity, he is also a great wordsmith.” Doesn’t that say it all and pique your interest?

Malcolm Muggeridge, Something Beautiful for God (New York: Image Books 1977).