I recently finished listening to Christopher West's "Naked Without Shame" talks, recorded in 2002, which one can listen to here. (It's free!) It was painful at times, but interesting. One of the most persistent questions I had while listening was, what do people see in this guy? Why is he so popular? Thinking about it, I realized I actually have the same question about a lot of things. In particular I have this question about (certain) televangelists (Oprah, for example). And if I had two words to describe the way West's talks struck me, they would perhaps be "annoying televangelist."
"Now that's not very nice!" you might think, especially if you're a CWest fan, and maybe you're right. But I don't think there's much substance in such a reaction. So what if it's "not very nice"?: You still need to ask: Is it just (as an assessment)? Is it justified (i.e., worth mentioning)? Well, not necessarily, I suppose.
For instance, I remember the reaction of one American 'journalist' to the election of Pope Benedict (way back in 2005): her comment was that he wasn't the right man for the job, partly because (according to her) he had an ugly face (I believe she actually used the expression "unfortunate visage"). Now that assessment is also "not very nice," but that's not the real problem with it. The real problem is that it's incredibly shallow and stupid.
So I suppose someone might think that characterizing West's talks as "annoying televangelism" is also, besides "not very nice," shallow and stupid. But the question is whether that would be correct. So what grounds my characterization?
To begin with, annoying televangelists may be basically good people, doing basically good work. So you can't say, "Now you listen to me: He's a good man, doing good work! Therefore it's not fair to compare him to annoying televangelists." That doesn't follow.
But if all there was to my impression of CWest as an annoying televangelist was, say, an antipathy to the man's style, then I suppose it wouldn't be very nice to mention it (publicly, at least), and probably there would be no justification for mentioning it - other than, say, if I was explaining to someone why I can't get too excited about his apostolate.
But as to whether my characterization might be stupid and shallow (and obviously I hope it's not!), it's important to recognize that "annoying televangelist" is not at all on the level of "unfortunate visage." But if it indeed is not, then what is the substance of this characterization?
To begin with, granted: annoying televangelists are typically primarily annoying because of their style. (And this does apply in the case of my reaction to CWest - it's just annoying, the way he talks, all of the exaggerated intonations and emphases, the dumb jokes, the bombast.)
But beyond style, I would associate two things with such characters: while they may present a message that is good in itself, they tend to present it in a shallow, demagogic way; and besides promoting the authentic message - that is, the one which they claim to be promoting -, they tend to be self-promoting, and in ways that obscure or corrupt the authentic message.
Now it seems to me that a good televangelist need not and should not be annoying. (Joel Osteen, for example, is only a little bit annoying.) And he need not and should not be a shallow self-promoter. Rather, he should be able to present things in a simple way, for a general audience, without saying things that are shallow, that are plain nonsense, or that are misleading and demagogical (i.e., 'rabble-rousing,' manipulating the crowd through popular emotions, prejudices, and fears). And this is to say that he should also be able to promote his message, and (incidentally) promote himself (there's nothing per se wrong with this), but without deviating from the authenticity of the message, which should always include the implicit aim of stimulating people to think clearly, critically, and reflectively. And if I'm not mistaken, "Naked Without Shame" deserves criticism on both these counts (shallowness and self-promotion).
To demonstrate that this assessment is correct would require some detailed analysis of the various things West actually says in his talks (and maybe I'll do some of that at some point). But I think there are also serious problems with the overall thrust of West's fundamental message. I think Fr. Angelo Geiger correctly identifies the main one, namely, his (rhetorical, at least) rejection of a hermeneutic of continuity (see below), which I would express by saying that his message is fundamentally Protestant. That is to say, he (implicitly) dismisses the constant teaching tradition of the Church from the time of the Apostles and (explicitly) preaches a theological revolution (whether he does so in reality, or primarily just rhetorically, is another question). There is nothing wrong with reformation (i.e., reform) within the Church. But the Protestant Reformation was a revolution, a revolt, a rejection of the real, visible, historic Church, and the creation of new, alternate institutions, fundamentally conceived as invisible, spiritual realities (invisibly united and visibly fragmented), precisely in opposition to the visible, historic church founded by the apostles and shepherded by their successors.
I imagine West might deny that his message is at all 'Protestant,' because he thinks he is promoting the message of the pope ("it's the pope, for crying out loud!"), and perhaps he thinks that it follows that his message must be Catholic. But it seems to me that in fact there's nothing authentically 'Catholic' about painting the pope as a theological revolutionary in relation to the first 2000 years of the Church, and it seems absurd to think that John Paul II himself would ever accept this characterization of his "theology of the body" or of his own pontificate. But, of course, "the pope has announced a theological revolution and I am its messenger" is a message which can play well to certain audiences and can serve as very effective self-promotion - it certainly simplifies things if we can shuffle aside the first 1500 years of the Church and focus on the Bible alone, or shuffle aside the first 2000 years of the Church and focus on four-years-worth of weekly catechetical addresses offered in the early 1980's by one pope (the 263rd successor of Peter, by the way). But teaching people to thank God for JPII and his TOB, and implicitly to thank God that they didn't live under any of those pre-TOB-revolution popes (who are collectively remarkable for their utter failure to publish any writings about the timing of sexual climaxes and such), is a highly dubious brand of 'Catholicism.'
Of course, the real focus of West's apostolate maybe just isn't on helping people to love the truth, and especially the highest and deepest truths - that is, his focus is not really theological, per se. Instead he's reaching out primarily to people who are psychologically wounded and warped by the lies of the 'sexual revolution,' so the fine points of truth and logic and the bigger picture of Catholic faith are extraneous to the narrow, essentially therapeutic purpose of his talks. That's fine. And this might be an effective propaedeutic to theology.
The problem, however, is that West sells himself as offering (and presumably actually aims to offer) something much more profound and universal than this, and this being the case, he does not have the right to just ignore the errors and un-Catholic tendencies in his position, even if these happen to be incidental to whatever immediate and real therapeutic value there is in his message.
In any case, 2002 is a while back now, so here's hoping that West has matured to the point where he no longer sees fit to deal with critics by assigning question-begging derogatory labels to them while ignoring their actual critiques. (To paraphrase West's strategy (at least back in 2002): "Well the Pharisees didn't like it when Jesus preached the gospel either" and "My critics are 'liberals' or 'conservatives' - but I'm Catholic!" [enthusiastic applause from the adoring crowd; eye-rolls from critics].)
...
Fr. Angelo Geiger makes some excellent points about West's "blind spot" here. An excerpt:
West is easily interpreted as suggesting that without TOB Catholics have never had any clear vision of what God's intention for human sexuality was from the beginning. Otherwise, would he not make a greater effort to teach chastity with a hermeneutic of continuity instead of concentrating almost exclusively on a very narrow part of magisterial teaching on human sexuality? It seems he is suggesting that our past has been clouded by puritanism because we did not have TOB, and our future will be the age of the love banquet because we do.
Is my interpretation of West a bit facile? But this is the problem with trying to popularize a work of deep theology and philosophy. It is not even clear to me whether West is engaged in apologetics or catechesis. The two are not the same thing. Apologetics is a kind of preamble to catechesis that elicits the assent of faith in respect to difficult truths by way of arguments that are easily understood and appealing to someone who has no basic understanding of revelation. Catechesis is sacramental preparation or ongoing education, based on faith already elicited.
Granted, the two overlap: Catechumens will often have to come to terms with issues they have a hard time with before their initial catechesis is completed, but apologetical explanations are not sufficient to complete a catechesis. If a new vision of human sexuality gets them in the door, only the tradition of the ages will get them to the sanctuary. In either case, TOB is not easily distilled to those who are relatively uninitiated.
The fact is the fundamental problem with human sexuality, even in the Victorian age and that of the sexual revolution is original sin. West acknowledges the fact of original sin when he says:
Of course, on this side of heaven, we will always be able to recognize a battle in our hearts between love and lust. Only in eternity will the battle cease, as will marriage as we know it.
But he says this only in passing. His real point is the following:
There will be no renewal of the Church and the world without a renewal of marriage and the family. And there will be no renewal of marriage and the family without a return to the full truth of the Christian sexual ethic. This will not happen, however, unless we can find a compelling way to demonstrate to the modern world that the biblical vision of sexuality is not the prudish list of prohibitions it is so often assumed to be, but rather it is the banquet of love for which we so desperately yearn.
West is right that many do assume that the Church's "vision of sexuality" is a "prudish list of prohibitions," but the vast majority of people today assume that the prohibition of fornication, contraception and soft-core pornography is prudish. Is Hefner really a pornographer because of prudery, or is perhaps the "Playboy Philosophy" just an obsessive rationalization for lust? I am not saying that prudery was not a factor in Hefner's life, but it simply does not account for the extent of his monumentally prurient behavior. So is prudery the real problem? I think our real work is not to show how TOB rescued the biblical vision of sexuality, but to show how the teaching of the Church in general has been misinterpreted.
I said that my problem with West's presentation is his interpretation of the past and the future and the way in which the present age of TOB is the hermeneutical key for both. What I mean is that his fundamental interpretation of the past is prudery and his fundamental interpretation of the future is something akin to original innocence. Original sin gets lost in the shuffle. The message is that we've got to be positive. "Think good thoughts via TOB," we are told, "and everything will settle down."
It's not going to happen. It's not.
