Aquinas
and Our Echo Chambers Aquinas and Our
Echo Chambers Aquinas and Our Echo
Chambers

Aquinas and Our Echo Chambers

The title of this weekend’s piece sounds like it could be the name of an 80s band from Liverpool (well, to anyone old enough to remember the 80s, at least!) but today’s Friday Thought originates not in my love for that wonderful period in music history, but in the fact that Wednesday this week (28th) marked the feast of a humble genius and patron saint of education, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).  A somewhat (according to tradition) corpulent Dominican friar, Aquinas was once referred to by a much-loved parish priest in Liverpool, Fr. John Seddon (just as corpulent himself in those days, 1994), as “Fat Tommy Acker!”  With tongue embedded firmly in cheek, John claimed to have no love for Aquinas because he was compulsory reading during his 6 years of training for the priesthood. “If we didn’t have to read all his stuff, Ushaw would only have been 2 years long!”  (Not everyone enjoyed their time in the seminary at Ushaw Moor, County Durham, I am reliably informed!) Aquinas was indeed a bulk of a man, although some interpret the contemporary descriptions of him as “stout” as more indicative of his height and stature than his roundness and obesity.  What is beyond doubt is that Thomas’ mind was certainly colossal!  Even if he wasn’t right about everything, Aquinas fathomed the depths of intellectual and spiritual oceans and his prose and poetry inspired some of the greatest philosophy, theology, music and prayer in the history of the Church.

A few years ago, I read The Echo Chamber, a 2021 novel authored by Irish bestseller John Boyne (he also wrote The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, the novel that became a famous movie).  The Echo Chamber is about the Cleverley family. George Cleverley has been a popular presenter at the BBC for decades.  His wife, Beverley Cleverley, is a bestselling author of popular escapist fiction.  Nelson, their oldest, is a rather odd teacher (no, really, I’m not kidding!) with next to no emotional intelligence. His older sibling, Elizabeth, is desperate to be an influencer, and when she is not destroying people’s lives and reputations on Twitter, her life fluctuates on any given day between the zeniths of the likes and shares she receives and the nadirs of minimal increases in her followers. The youngest member of the family, Achilles, still at secondary school, has worked out that he is attractive and nasty enough to make a few grand in cash via the dark arts of sexual exploitation and the blackmail of gay men online.  Though George has always thought of himself as a tolerant, pretty liberal kind of guy, he cannot keep pace with a world that has changed beyond recognition since he started his career.  Words have shifted alarmingly in meaning and when he makes one indiscreet gaffe too many, using the wrong pronoun, misgendering and deadnaming his transitioning solicitor’s receptionist, he opens up a right Pandora’s box!  Boyne’s book, in equal measure, is both brilliantly hilarious and depressing, a satirical observation of the difficulties encountered today when mentioning, in a public forum, any potentially controversial topic (and even one or two topics you would not think were particularly contentious). Boyne shows us that there are people in the world who spend hours each day trolling social media looking for people by whom to feel offended, scouring devices for victims to bully and cancel forever.

I thought of Boyne’s book again this week on the feast of Aquinas.  How different Saint Thomas’ attitude towards those with whom he disagreed. Aquinas always sought out what was true and good in the positions and arguments of those with whom he was debating and disagreeing, be it a pagan like Plato, Aristotle or Cicero, an Andalusian Muslim polymath like Averroes or a Jewish scholar like Maimonides.  He never attacked the person he was debating, still less looked to cancel them or ruin their reputation.  On the contrary, he brought out what was excellent about their arguments, often presenting those good qualities in stronger terms than they did!  Instead of what we call ad hominem attacks (where people attack the person rather than deal with what they are saying - something very characteristic of the ranting and raving that we read on social media today) or straw men attacks (attacking things that your opponent is not actually saying), Aquinas engaged in “steel-manning” (i.e. where you strengthen an opponent’s argument, paraphrasing it in its very best form before responding to it).  To use a sporting analogy, Aquinas always played the ball but never the man!  He encourages us to see disagreement with others as an opportunity to learn and to grow, not to sulk and attack - to engage with opposing ideas, not dwell in echo chambers.  Aquinas loved the truth enough to be willing to accept it from anyone who spoke it, including those who were not part of his gang.  He also had the tools to defend his own views when he thought they were correct.

John Boyne shows how our own culture is quite different.  It is a culture that has become so sensitive that it takes offence at everything with which it disagrees and yet, at the same time, is also more than happy to engage in a nasty verbal violence that looks to ruin people because their opinions are different.  The “safe spaces” boasted of by such a culture are only granted to people who are on message.  Not that this - social media aside - is anything new in history.   From the Vatican to episcopal houses and the diocesan careerist apparatchiks who do the bishop’s bidding, from board rooms to the shop floor in the workplace, from ministerial and presidential chambers to the streets that they govern, dictators have known throughout history that once reasoned argument has disappeared, they still have bullying, censorship and the ability to make people disappear.  Again, how different the approach of Aquinas, who said, while commenting on Aristotle, “We must love them both - those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject - for both have laboured in the search for truth”.

Our young people are going out into a world that will not always agree with them.  We do them a great disservice by not preparing them for that, by not providing them with the intellectual tools and personal qualities they will need to be able to deal with that.  But, of course, we adults cannot give what we do not possess.  Saint Thomas Aquinas, profound, corpulent Dominican (or - with gratitude to John Seddon - deep, fat friar), pray for us!