Does anyone else wonder where surnames have gone? Today it seems that no one has, or at least uses, his last name. The practice of addressing a stranger by his first name – regardless of his age or ‘station in life’ (to use a superannuated term) – is commonplace. Is it symptomatic of a pervasive trend in our society to reject or to ignore our links with our past (or to other family members)? Family names are just that – they link us to relatives and to a personal history. Family names identify us with tradition.
Why do so many eschew the use of last names? Presumably, it is to foster a friendly sense of familiarity and social homogenization. However, in promoting ‘fraternity and equality’ the practice may be jeopardizing that third goal in France’s national motto: ‘liberty’.
One reason might be that the practice diminishes distinction and in doing so contributes to the regrettably popular mindset that distinction is a social ill which should be minimized. Where distinction is scorned sameness reigns and the liberty for self-realization is frustrated. Perhaps a second reason is that universal ‘first-name-only-ism’ feeds into to a general incuriousness about our upbringing, where we come from, and what our backgrounds are. This indifference lends itself to our willingness to be ignorant of our past both as a society and as a civilization. Such ignorance threatens our liberty because, as the saying goes, those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it. Ignorance of the past becomes our prison.
There is a third and more sinister point. Subtly and unintentionally ‘first-name-only-ism’ is another form of the broader and more varied iconoclasm infesting our world. Toppling statues, rejecting gender specific pronouns, banning history books, ‘indefining’ marriage are a few examples. Today’s iconoclastic fervor will erase our past, leave us rootless and purposeless, and hurl us into chaos. Without shared purpose and the common guide of time-tested experience we will be lost with no vision. Could the writer of Proverbs have foreseen our nation’s current plight when over two millennia ago he penned: “without a vision people lose restraint” (29)? In the throes of our culturecide we foolishly ignore St. Paul’s admonition to the Thessalonians: ‘test all things and hold on to what is good”.
In his new book Let Us Dream Pope Francis writes: “A crisis is almost always the result of self-forgetting, and the way forward comes through recalling our roots” (p.51). Who will help us in our increasingly eradicated existence? Whose light will enable us to see where we have been and where we might go?
Ensconced on the banks of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island there beams such a beacon. The Portsmouth Institute for Faith and Culture (Portsmouthinstitute.org) is the collaboration of two American houses of the English Benedictine Congregation (the oldest continuously operating Benedictine congregation erected by the Holy See in 1216). As its mission states: The Institute is “a place of learning, leisure, and love. Through learning, we will enliven the imagination in its pursuit of truth. Through leisure, we will encourage contemplation and open receptivity to God’s goodness. And, through love, we will engage the heart in its pursuit of God and the beatific vision. In this way, we will cultivate a vibrant Catholic intellectual community and contribute to the restoration of Christian culture”.
The remedy to today’s splintering iconoclasm begins with the renaissance of culture and proceeds on a path to a fully human future. This ancient, evergreen Benedictine charism illuminates the way.