A Skeptic on the Road of Saints

A Pilgrimage to Eternity:
From Canterbury to Rome
in Search of a Faith,
by Timothy Egan.
Viking Press
384 pp., $28.00

“Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tide of rivers, the vast compass of the ocean, the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.” Moved by these words of St. Augustine, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Timothy Egan’s latest book chronicles his pilgrimage along the Via Francigena.

On the route first traced out by Sigeric the Serious, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 990, Egan is both engaging in his descriptions of flora and fauna, landscape and architecture, and tiresome in his repetition of modern and modernist shibboleths concerning the history of the West and the Roman Catholic Church. Chesterton observed that “the Catholic Church is the only thing that saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his own age.” Egan (b. 1954), unfortunately, has his blistered and bloody feet firmly planted in the latter half of the 20th century.

At the start, Egan tells us his reasons for taking this pilgrimage. He describes himself as “a skeptic by profession, an Irish Catholic by baptism, culture, and upbringing—lapsed, but listening.” Much later in the book, Egan recounts the horrific actions of his childhood parish priest, who abused upwards of 60 children, including Egan’s own brother, and how three of those victims committed suicide.

He notes the decline of the faith in the very continent that nurtured it from its origins as a “small Jewish sect” and sets out on his pilgrimage in an “attempt to find God in Europe before God is gone.” Egan also relates well the lukewarm or blasé attitude that characterizes many Christians today, and thus he has another reason for his pilgrimage: “I’m looking for something stronger: a stiff shot of no-bullshit spirituality…. It’s time to force the issue, to decide what I believe or admit what I don’t.” The culmination of his pilgrimage, he hopes, is to visit with Pope Francis. Taking him at his word, one feels for him as he tries to find answers to the ultimate questions. But one wonders if Egan is actually listening.

From almost the beginning of the chronicle, one is reminded of Ronald Reagan’s quote about the left: “They know so much that isn’t so.” Egan’s assessment of European history—which is coterminous with the history of the Catholic Church—is embarrassingly flawed. He does not attempt a sympathetic look at the people, religion, and culture that built Europe; instead he considers, evaluates, and judges with the eyes of a late-20th-century American. He is not one seeking to understand, but one who judges the actions of persons of the past, not with eternal standards, but with the standards of present-day elites.

His forays into historical exegesis read more like the conclusive offerings of secular modern public high school textbooks and guilt by association than a nuanced historical assessment. For example, in a brief discussion of the European wars of religion in the 16th century, Egan compares the loss of life in those wars with the U.S. Civil War, including an aside that the motto of the Confederate States was Deo vindice. Obviously, the evil Catholic Church and the evil Confederacy colluded together to inflict death with the same metaphysical conviction. Besides being a non sequitur, one wonders if these little journalistic innuendos mark the rest of Egan’s oeuvre.

Of course, the usual subjects come up: papal mistresses, the Inquisition, the Crusades, Galileo, Pius XII sending a “friendly letter” to Hitler, sexual scandals. Even the “obscure and vainglorious” Archduke Franz Ferdinand is not spared. I’ll pass over the fact that this last gave up many of his royal prerogatives when he entered a morganatic marriage because he loved the woman, something that surely marks the “vainglorious.” St. Augustine is with Egan on his trip, yet he never bothers to wrestle significantly with the doctrine of original sin, something which might explain some of the darker moments in human history.

In Egan’s assessment, the heroic are those who bucked the system, the rebels. Erasmus, St. Francis of Assisi, Galileo, St. Benedict Joseph Labre, St. Lucia Filippini, Giordano Bruno, and Pope Francis (despite his position as Pontifex Maximus) all receive accolades. To be sure, the history of the Church is a mixed bag; but a more honest assessment would acknowledge it was the action of popes, bishops, lay faithful, and great religious orders which preserved the monuments of pagan antiquity, established universities, and, from the beginning, followed the constant openness of her scholar-saints (e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas regularly cited the Muslim thinkers Avicenna and Averroes and the Jewish thinker Maimonides).

Egan is tendentious in giving credit to those he considers his heroes and ignoring their flaws, while ignoring the great achievements of those he dislikes or those—certainly within his memory and experience—whom he doesn’t consider worth examining. The example of Pope Francis will suffice. In the book, Egan fawns over the reigning pontiff: “And who is left defending science, philosophy, and enlightened inquiry? The pope. Well, this pope.” In another place, he makes much of Pope Francis praying at Auschwitz.

Egan has to go back to medieval and renaissance popes to make his hero a hero. Recent history eludes him: Pius XII’s nuanced view of evolution in Humani generis (1950), John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et ratio (1998), the celebrated public debate and conversation between Joseph Ratzinger (later, Pope Benedict XVI) and leading European thinker and neo-Marxist Jürgen Habermas in 2005 are but a few examples. Apparently, these are not convincing enough to demonstrate the Church’s engagement with “science, philosophy, and enlightened inquiry.” As an aside, it should also be noted that Pius XII condemned the Nazi regime, and the scholarship of Prof. Ronald Rychlak debunking the notion of “Hitler’s pope” is as exhaustive as it is convincing, but it seems to have eluded Egan’s research; likewise, John Paul II and Benedict XVI both visited and prayed at Auschwitz before Francis.

Egan forthrightly states: “I am not a theologian. Others can fight over doctrine, as they have for centuries.” Curiously, he then proceeds to make mention of the divorced and remarried receiving Holy Communion, to provide a biblical exegesis on the words of Christ and to conclude they have nothing to say about sexual morality, and to comment on the fact that women cannot be priests.

In a moment of self-examination, Egan recounts a conversation with a colleague. This colleague pointed out some of Egan’s flaws, which the latter obviously took to heart and included in this book in the context of trying to leave something behind as a result of completing a pilgrimage:

My friend Sam says I have too many chips on my shoulder—about the Brits and the Irish, about the monopoly that Harvard and Yale have on the Supreme Court, about the way the East Coast still condescends to the West—all things I couldn’t shake at the start of this pilgrimage, when I tried to lighten the load.

In reality, the biggest chip that Egan has on his shoulder is the Catholic Church: her claims, her doctrines, and her structure. There is not a chapter that goes by without a lash that is inflicted on the Mystical Body of Christ, much like the ubiquity of “pugilistic penguins” slapping around third graders in the mythos of countless Baby Boomer Catholics.

For all these problems with the book, one must acknowledge Egan’s prose is mellifluous, with soul-stirring moments. His descriptions of his trek and the French, Swiss, and Italian landscapes are breathtaking, as are his recounting of the personalities he encounters and his appreciation of certain historical moments—good and bad—that were significant in the life of Europe.

At various times in his pilgrimage, his two kids and his wife join him. One can sense the joie de vivre in his writing during these times and the sense of loss and sadness when they leave him. He acknowledges with sadness his children’s ignorance of spiritual things and places the blame on himself.

“The glimpse into another’s interior life is not enough to know the whole, even in a spouse.” So wrote the author as he recounted walking the last leg of his journey with his wife, who was struggling with the impending death of her sister. This line is a beautiful truth that Egan hits on, and, unlike his dishonesty toward the historical record, it prompts me not to judge his search for faith too harshly. To be sure, he travels with a lot of baggage—not least of which is a sizeable animus towards the Church as an institution, which is understandable considering what happened to his brother.

At the same time, he is moved by beautiful things: his children, his wife, seeing the shoes of disabled children on an obscure French saint’s tomb looking for a miracle. He is moved by the serenity and kindness of a priest who takes him where he’s at and tells him to “listen” for the voice of God.

He is full of contradictions—he prides himself on being open-minded and free-thinking, but he cannot bring himself to acknowledge the consistency and intellectual tradition of the Church; he appears to close his mind to miracles, until he encounters a dead, incorrupt saint opening her eyes to him; he sees the essence of Christianity as one’s duty toward others, but says very little about one’s duty to God. In the end, he is still a muddle “in the squishy middle” of his age.

He ends his chronicle quoting what he attributes to St. Benedict Joseph Labre, the wandering homeless saint, with whom he is very much taken: “There is no way. The way is made by walking.” In my brief research on Labre, I could not find any reference to him saying this (though he said a great many other things which Egan would find to be representative of the bad old Catholic Church). I did, however find an almost identical quote from a poem of Antonio Machado (1875-1939), an acquaintance of Oscar Wilde (for whom Egan has great esteem), in his Border of a Dream: Selected Poems.

I suspect this twice-repeated misquotation—innocent or not—is indicative of a modern who knows much, but understands little. Yet, modern or not, he is a man; and I am comforted that while I may have “glimpsed into his interior life, it is not enough to know the whole.” Should he listen and open his eyes, perhaps he will one day discover what he was taught long ago: that there is a Way, which is also the Truth and the Life.