I confess that my eyebrows went up when I read Fr. Barron's reference to Joyce in his Preface. The reason is that Philip Rieff, who I have been reading recently, cites Joyce as an artist of "deathworks," works of art that are the artist's vehicle to attack Judeo-Christian culture. (Oh, by the way, wasn't Ulysses the subject of a major obscenity trial?)
And so my question would be how to interpret Molly Bloom's "wonderfully rambling" stream of consciousness. It may be that Thomas Aquinas can say yes to all of his experience because he is a saint, and has closed down completely his "openness" to the possibility of personal evil. But as far as I am concerned the rest of us mere mortals are not in that exalted position. I wouldn't think Molly Bloom was either, but that I don't know.
For the unwashed masses, of which I count myself a member, I would suggest, on the authority of Rieff, that Bloom's (Joyce's?) attitude is exactly the opposite of what we should "embrace." Her attitude is a modern day heresy. Here's why (as I read Rieff).
In his book Charisma, Rieff claims that the path to spirituality is not a "Yes," but a "No," in fact, a string of nos extending throughout our lives. (Yeses are yesses to nos!) We are not Dionysians whose spirituality is the ecstacy of orgy -- an experience of all possibilities in sexual life and in life in general. For mere mortals like me, spirituality (and I would say Christian spirituality) is more an experience of purgatory, a succession of Nos (to instinct), the closing down of possibilities, the turning away from power (see my previous post). It cannot be a string of unconditional Yeses to "experience." (I remember in the 1960's and early 1970's friends saying they felt life had to be "experienced" -- mostly as a rationalization to smoke dope!)
Again, according to Rieff, modern heresy holds the opposite. At its extreme, it rejects not only the interdictory commands of the decalogue, but the very notion of commands, since the absolute commander, God, is either dead or has abandoned his post. Freedom is precisely found in saying Yes to instincts and desires (to the "life force!", the "energies"), since to say No on the basis of "guilt-producing rules" promulgated by some ancient and outmoded "god" is irrational, repressive and therefore positively unhealthy. There are many artists this day whose art advocates this view. (I think of "Madonna" for example.) These are artists we should avoid or expose for the damage they do to us mere mortals.
The real purpose of art (according to Rieff) is more than Fr. Barron's conveying "understanding;" it is to convey saving guilt. Think: "You must change your life." (Archaic Torso of Apollo, Rilke). True art, says Rieff, shows us our "true better," known by God, knowable by us, and when known by us, known as what we ought to be but are not. This knowledge is "true, oppositional, accusative, and personal." It is moral (not scientific) knowledge, and in its being known by us it prickles us with guilt, which is a sense of indebtedness to those whom we feel, deeply, we do not enough resemble (including our true, better, self).
"The great arts of a high culture are conveyances of this saving, renunciatory sense of what we are not but, stimulated by those arts, yet hope to be. All true works of art point out directions of renunciatory self-transformation." (Charisma, pp. 36-37). The purpose of true art is to "shut down possibilities," not open them up. Judging from this standard, many modern artists do not produce true art, despite all they may contribute to our "understanding" of the modern condition.
In this way of thinking, Molly Bloom's string of Yes's shows us the wrong "way" (cf.Ps.1). (Joyce may have left the message ambivalent, but isn't that too a defect in his art?) Thomas Aquinas might have been "unable to sin" -- and likewise Molly Bloom, confined to a sickbed -- but we surely aren't!
May I lastly suggest that too much spiritual reading, in striving to accommodate (and even celebrate) our Yeses, blunts Christ's crucial call, which is to "deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me." Seems to me, saying Yes to Christ's call starts with saying No.
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