The Mysterious Island

One of the benefits of being part of a parish book club is that it makes me read books I would otherwise probably never read - like, for example, this month's selection by Jules Verne (1828-1905), The Mysterious Island (1875), tr. Jordan Stump (Random House, 2001).

It is easy to appreciate why a technology-loving 19th-century audience might have been taken with this novel. That was when the industrial age was most celebrated, and Jules Verne was certainly one to express that celebratory spirit. Of course, even in the 19th century, the Romantic movement revealed reservations about progress, but the overall direction of the 19th-century saw modernity, science, and technology as benefits to be celebrated. For many of us in the 21st century, however, when even space exploration has lost a lot of its luster, the triumph of the industrial age has long worn off. We are as apt to be bored by Verne's castaways' creative inventiveness as his earlier readers were excited by that aspect of the story. I know I was! As a result, I found much of what was probably meant to be an exciting adventure somewhat tedious. (It doesn't help, of course, that we are dealing with a 19th-century, originally serialized novel.) The tedious passages describing the seemingly endless succession of lucky chances and technological accomplishments call for patience on the reader's part. That patience will be rewarded as the final chapters of the story become more adventurous - and more surprisingly mysterious.

Characterized in Caleb Carr's Introduction as "arguably Verne's most important and self-revelatory book," The Mysterious Island tells the increasingly implausible story of five Americans marooned on a deserted Pacific island somewhere in the southern hemisphere, who utilize their scientific knowledge and ingenuity to exploit the opportunity provided by a richly abundant island not only to survive but to prosper, to make their island into a miniature modern industrial society. This would especially appeal perhaps as in some sense almost an allegory about America itself - an almost miraculously abundant wilderness turned into the world's most prosperous society (albeit taking much more time to accomplish this task than Verne's lucky castaways). The reader may assume that Verne (and many of his readers) would have shared a Tocquevillian attitude about America as the modern world's emblematic future.

Less emphasized but immediately obvious to this senior-citizen reader is the evident physical fitness of all the protagonists, who regularly walk endless miles and perform multiple feats of physical labor. None of this is superhuman, of course, but it is a reminder that their multiple accomplishments might well be beyond the capacity of any random collection of five less talented and less sturdy individuals in the real world!

The author summarizes the protagonists' sense of their accomplishments on the first anniversary of their arrival at the island: "They had begun as mere castaways, fighting the elements for their wretched lives, and unsure of their prospects for success! And. now, thanks to their leader's knowledge, they were true colonists, equipped with weapons, tools, and instruments, and they had taken the island's various plants, animals, and minerals - elements from each of nature's three kingdoms - and turned them to their own advantage!"

This plot is complicated, however, by the fact that all is not as it initially seems. The island is, in fact, mysterious. the mystery component contributes a whole other dimension to the story, making it more than just a celebration of science and ingenuity. The author obviously agrees with the colonists' de facto leader that progress is "a good and necessary thing" and that is "a mistake" to believe one could bring back the past." But, in an ending which 21st-century readers might even better appreciate than the original audience, nature wins out; and all the technological ingenuity in the world is ultimately no match for it.

And, for all the castaways' seeming self-sufficiency, that progressive trope is, of course, completely undermined by the presence of the mysterious benefactor, whose own story highlights the abiding relevance of human power politics, science and technology notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, the story takes a novel turn with the discovery of someone else who has been marooned nearby. The experience of finding a man abandoned on a neighboring island for some 12 years and reduced by his isolation to a seemingly sub-human savage state, and then, as it were, coaxing him back to something resembling normalcy, that sub-plot prompts interesting reflection on exactly what it means to be human, on what it means to say that. human beings are social animals - this in the 19th-century heyday of liberal individualism!

Yet that experience itself - namely how the colonists ever even came to be aware of the existence of their new comrade - only further seems to highlight the story's growing sense of mystery. We now know for certain that there must be someone, somewhere, who is also an active character in this story. 

In the end, the mysterious someone does the colonists one final life-saving favor, just in time, as nature triumphs over civilization; and the colonists get to do that characteristic 19th-century thing, they immigrate to America and build themselves a successful and prosperous life together there.

Re-Embracing Robigalia

 

The modest, easy-to-have-missed occurrence earlier this week of Earth Day 2026 reminded me of when Earth Day was still new and exciting - and concerns it highlights were likewise new and exciting. I can still remember as a college student attending the first Earth Day celebration in Central Park in 1970, when nearly one million people participated in Earth Day events around the city. Hardly anyone then spoke much about climate change (although my Geology teacher at City College did). For most the focus was on pollution and the progress that was beginning to be made in that area.

But, long before the invention of Earth Day, we had, for centuries, had Rogation Days!

From the reign of Pope Saint Gregory the Great until that of Pope Saint Paul VI, April 25 (which, for some reason, was widely also thought to have been the date on which Saint Peter had first arrived in Rome) was observed in the Roman calendar as one of the four annual Rogation Days. The April 25 celebration was known as the Litanaie majores (the "Greater Litanies"). The other three Rogation Days (the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before the Ascension) were known as the Litaniae minores (the "Lesser Litanies") and were of ancient Gallican, non-Roman origin. I have previously written here [Cuckoo Day April 25, 2012] about the pre-Christian roots of the "Greater Litanies" in the ancient Roman Robigalia festival, one of ancient Rome's significant spring agricultural commemorations. As I noted then:

 

“Ancient peoples appreciated their dependence on the natural seasons and the harvest. The change in religion redirected the focus of people's prayers to the true Creator God. But that didn't change their dependence on nature or their need for a successful harvest or the value of ritualizing that on traditional days.”

 

I also suggested that, in the light of contemporary environmental degradation and the dangers to human civilization posed by climate change's devastating effects: 

 

“Perhaps a rationalized late 20th-century Roman Liturgy's abandonment of such reminders of our connection - and dependence - on nature wasn't such a smart idea, after all.”

Neither the pre-conciliar liturgical movement nor the Second Vatican Council itself ever explicitly anticipated, let alone contemplated, the abolition of the Rogation Days, prior to their disappearance in Paul VI's 1969 liturgical calendar. There was, admittedly, in certain quarters a view (which one might charitably label "liturgical puritanism") that the Rogation Days were not "in harmony with the spirit of Easter," and there were in fact proposals to eliminate some and transfer others (cf. the 19th meeting of the Pontifical Committee for the Reform of the Sacred Liturgy, April 29, 1952). More modestly, the 1960 rubrical reform of Pope Saint John XXIII, while making no change regarding April 25, made the "Lesser Litanies" optional in private recitation of the Office and gave Local Ordinaries the faulty of transferring them to three other successive days which might seem more suitable locally (General Rubrics, 87, 90). I guess that proved to be the proverbial camel's nose under the proverbial tent!

On the other hand, expressing a deeper spirit and sense of the 20th-century liturgical movement, the esteemed Pius Parsch wrote: "The four Rogation Days have preserved the main elements of this venerable rite [the ancient Roman stational observance], an observance that we should respect and foster. for we should pray both perseveringly and in common, since special efficacy and power is attached to such prayer." 

No less than the calamities of Pope Gregory the Great's time, climate change and its associated environmental and other woes seriously threaten the planet itself, and particularly some of the planet's most vulnerable populations. Furthermore, since I first wrote about this on this site over a decade ago, the U.S. has definitively retreated from even recognizing, let alone responding effectively to, the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation. The case for recovering the sensibility underlying the Rogation Days, for recovering what the Roman liturgy lightly discarded some 57 years ago,  for re-embracing a Christianized Robigalia, is, if anything, even more obvious than it was then!

Reading the Bible as a Nation under God's Judgment

As part of seven straight days of continuous public bible readings from Genesis to Revelation, called "America Reads the Bible," this evening at 6:00 p.m. ET, President Trump will publicly read 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, a passage specifically assigned to him apparently because of its decades-long role as a call to prayer in America. Bunni Pounds, founder and president of Christians Engaged, said that this passage, particularly verse 14, has been central to American prayer life for decades, often invoked during times of national reflection. (Hopefully, President Trump will remember - or be prompted - to say "Second Chronicles," not "Two Chronicles"!)

That particular text reads: If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. I was not particularly aware that this passage "has been central to American prayer life for decades, often invoked during times of national reflection." It is, however, an obviously appropriate choice.

The ghost of the religion-hating Thomas Jefferson notwithstanding, public prayer has long been a fixture of our civic life in this traditionally religious country. As Jefferson's wiser rival expressed it to the Massachusetts Militia on October 11, 1798: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." This was precisely because of the limited power permitted to government under our constitution. "Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net." Likewise, the mot famous and perceptive 19th-century observer of American politics, the French aristocrat Alexis deTocqueville Tocqueville noted that, while democracy dangerously fosters individualism, American religion balanced this by providing a community of  widely shared moral values and beliefs, which strengthened rather than threatened American democracy.

In its original Old Testament context, 2 Chronicles 7:14 obviously applied to God's covenant with the People of Israel. God promised to hear Israel's prayers, forgive their sins, and heal their land. Simultaneously, however, God articulated certain expectations that his people, on their part, were to fulfill. God challenged them (1) to humble themselves, (2) to pray, (3) to seek God's face, and (4) to turn from their wicked ways.

Originally tied to God's covenant with Israel, both God's promise and his expectations of his people continue for Christians of every time in every place. At his now very famous Prayer Vigil in Saint Peter's Basilica on the very day that peace negotiations began between the U.s. and Iran, Pope Leo warned against the "delusion of omnipotence." The obvious corrective to that delusion is for leaders and their nations to practice what God enjoined for Israel in 2 Chronicles 7:14 - humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways.

it is a fine thing that these words will be publicly read by the President himself. More important, however, is that those who read and those who hear these words internalize them and reflect them in our national life and collective behavior at home and abroad.

Our Politicized Relgious Landscape

 

Continuing the national debate about the present condition and future prospects for American Christianity, that debate has been greatly enriched by Southern Illinois University Professor of Religion and Politics and American Baptist Church Pastor Ryan P. Burge's new book, The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us (Brazos Press, 2026). 

Burge offers a clear portrayal (backed up by lots of social science numbers) of what has happened in and to American religion over the course of the past half century. As the book's subtitle suggests, one of his major claims is that the onetime moderate middle of American Christianity - notably "mainline Protestantism" - has largely disappeared, with all the social costs that entails in terms of decreased exposure to and interaction with people one might be different from or disagree with and reducing eh American religious landscape to increasingly conservative Republican churches and non-religion with little in between.  

The tipping point for Burge seems to have been the 1990s. (That decade increasingly seems to emerge as having been politically and culturally critical. Think of John Ganz, When the Clock Broke). Politics changed decisively with the Newt Gingrich revolution, and that polarizing period also saw the consolidation of the religious right and the official declaration of religious culture war by Pat Buchanan. Combine that with the end of the Cold War, which had importantly been a common conflict against godless communism, and the development of the internet, with its radical reshaping of community and identity.

Burge's social science research highlights how Americans increasingly experience religion as coded conservative, such that those who do not identify with conservative cultural or political positions feel decreasingly at home in religion and more at home with liberal non-religion.  According to Burge, "Americans are increasingly understanding religion in a very clear-cut way: as a tribal marker for politics. Thus, to call oneself a Christian (or even more specifically, an evangelical) is to make a statement about one's political worldview, not really about one's local church or spiritual walk." 

Burge recognizes that "Catholicism has withstood the urge to divide and purify more than any large religious organization in the United States." That said, he doubts the Church can "resist the fragmentation and division that have become so deeply ingrained in American society over the last several years." He notes "that the only reason the Catholic Church has not declined more rapidly is because it has drawn a large number of nonwhite members" at a time when "race is one of the primary cleavages in the American political landscape." 

Hitherto, "white Catholicism was politically heterogeneous." Sunday Mass may have been "the only opportunity that exists for people from diverse backgrounds to meet in a social space on a regular basis. However, with the political sorting happening among white Catholics, this space is transitioning from a place of tremendous diversity to a place that is less and less welcoming to those who find themselves on the left side of the political spectrum."

Meanwhile, Catholic Mass attendance has declined since the 1970s, a trend Catholicism shares with the even more declining mainline Protestant churches.

Back to the larger picture, Burge believes "the average American increasingly understands religion through the lens of tribalism. It's a way to say which political team one plays for, whom they find common cause with, and how they line up during an election season." That said, he examines the persistent debate over whether polarization is primarily an elite phenomenon or has penetrated among more ordinary Americans. He sees a certain disconnect. White evangelicals and Catholics are increasingly moving right; the nonreligious increasingly moving left. Yet, there is data that suggests average Americans tend "to be fairly moderate, nuanced, and pragmatic in how they view some of the most talked about and divisive issues in modern society." At the same time, however, those average Americans are "becoming more and more convinced that they should at least feign support for the most strident voices in their tribe." It appears as if many "listen to the thought leaders of their respective tribes and just can't believe everything they are hearing. However, they do agree that the other side is clearly wrong and deserves to be ridiculed for belonging to a different tribe."

Having presented his disconcerting data, Burge still wants to make the case for traditional, inclusive (what he would call moderate) American religion. "People gathering under one roof to sing together, pray together, and work in common cause to create a better community and a better society will certainly move us closer to the ideals that were set forth by the Founding Fathers of our country. There's nothing simpler and more consequential than people getting up on a Sunday morning, getting dressed, and making their way to a local house of worship. The fate and future of American democracy may be at stake."

Orestes Brownson

 

Orestes Brownson (September 14, 1803 - April 17, 1876), who died 150 years ago today, was perhaps the most intellectually noteworthy lay American Catholic convert of the 19th century. His contemporary (and fellow convert), Paulist Fathers' founder, Servant of God Isaac Hecker (1819-1888) later recalled: “He [Brownson] was the master, I the disciple. God alone knows how much I am indebted to him.” [“Dr. Brownson and Catholicity,” Catholic World, 45 (1887), p. 235.] According to one of Brownson's more recent biographers, Patrick W. Carey, Hecker “was interested in ideas and enjoyed extended discussions with Brownson,” while the older, more intellectual Brownson, although somewhat wary of Hecker’s mystical tendencies, “was drawn to what he criticized in Hecker and knew, instinctively, that Hecker possessed something that he did not.” [Orestes A, Brownson: American Religious Weathervane (Eerdmans,2004), p. 138.] Importantly, Carey highlights how Brownson also “always had an emphasis on the social dimension of Christianity, an emphasis that evolved into his stress upon the church" [p.135].  

Brownson himself recounted his long journey to Catholicism in 1857 in The Convert, which acknowledged how difficult a move it was to become Catholic and how ineffective he considered the Catholic apologetics of the time - "dry, feeble, and unattractive."

Bronson was born and raised in the intense religious atmosphere of the Second Great Awakening. He learned his Bible as a child. He became a Presbyterian, then a Universalist, then a Unitarian, none of which he found fully satisfactory. He was attracted to the 19th-century movements we now remember as "utopian socialism." In the 1830s, he was active in the New York Workingmen's Party, motivated by his "deep sympathy with the poorer and more numerous classes."

When Isaac Hecker first heard him lecture in New York in early 1841, Brownson was a prominent Unitarian minister, journalist, and active social reformer. Later that year, thanks to the initiative of the Hecker brothers, Brownson was back in New York to give more lectures and stayed with them at their home. At the time, besides being an intellectual influence, Brownson also became a personal friend and a help to Isaac and his family as they struggled to come to terms with the increasing intensity of Isaac Hecker's spiritual experience. Although both men moved on to more explicitly religious preoccupations and Brownson's faith in American democracy diminished over time, his early political program never completely lost its salience for Hecker.“The ominous outlook of popular politics at the present moment,” Hecker wrote in 1887, “plainly shows that legislation such as we then proposed, and such as was then within the easy reach of State and national authority, would have forestalled difficulties whose settlement at this day threatens a dangerous disturbance of public order. [“Dr. Brownson and the Workingman’s Party Fifty Years Ago,” Catholic World 45 (1887), pp. 205-208.] 

In the 1840s, Brownson concluded that "progress depends on the objective element of life ... on living in communion with God." In 1844, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Boston's Archbishop Fitzpatrick. Brownson's Quarterly Review, which he had founded in 1838, added to his prominence as the best known Catholic convert and apologist of his era, who also enjoyed a large non-Catholic audience.

He remained friends with Hecker for the rest of his life, visiting and corresponding with him, and contributing to Hecker's Catholic World, although theological and editorial disagreements  would eventually cause him to cease writing for the Paulist publication.

Those disagreements were anticipated in Brownson's review of Hecker's second book, Aspirations of Nature. in Brownson's Quarterly Review (October 1857). While praising Hecker and his goal of converting Americans to Catholicism by appealing to "the earnest seeker after truth, who is revolted by the depreciation of reason and. nature by Calvinism," Brownson rejected Hecker's tendency to to treat New England Transcendentalism "as an index of the direction likely to be taken by the American mind." Brownson had a better appreciation of American Protestantism's prospect of renewing and revitalizing itself, producing "more conservative forms of Protestantism." Indeed, Brownson suggested, "the American people are more Evangelical to-day than they were fifteen or twenty years ago." Hecker, Brownson acknowledged, was writing "to the popular mind, in a popular style, and seldom aims at technical precision." He appreciated how Hecker's purpose "led him to dwell on the goods retained after the Fall rather than on those lost by it." That said, however, he faulted Hecker "for not taking sufficient pains to guard his readers against confounding what reason and nature have the power to do with what they actually accomplish." With remarkable prescience, Brownson worried whether, in appealing to "Rationalists or Transcendentalists, we are more likely to be regarded as converting the Church to them, than we are to convert them to the Church." Of particular relevance to the contemporary American situation, Brownson insisted on the empirical fact that there never has been an actual state of pure nature. Hecker's "Earnest Seeker," Brownson observed "has been born and trained in a Christian atmosphere, under direct or indirect Christian influences, for no man absolutely ignorant of revelation and grace could propose his problems in the form he proposes them."

Americans can be converted, Brownson argued, "by addressing that in them which is common to all men, their reason, their heart, and their conscience, not what is peculiar to them, or what is their local or temporary interest or passion." He feared subordinating "the Church to American nationality" and warned that mixing the Church "with a radical party or a conservative party would be to compromise her Catholicity." That last warning, in particular, seems an especially apt one for us all to ponder today.

Photo: Orestes Brownson, Portrait by G.P.A. Healy (1863).