At last, after all these years thinking that Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, was just a paean to selfishness and greed, Fr Robert Sirico reveals what he calls the “hermeneutical key” to Rand’s thought, a key that reveals that John Galt, the protagonist of the book, is actually….a Christ figure!
When you have finished laughing you can examine Fr Sirico’s argument:
As the plot unfolds, it might be said that Galt “comes unto his own and his own receives him not.” In fact, the world despises him, not because he is evil, but because he is good, and the leaders of the people set out to kill him because of his goodness and because those in darkness hate the light, their deeds being evil and contradictory. When the final confrontation with evil comes, Galt falls “into the hands of evil men” who seek to destroy him—these were the high priests of their day—and who have a certain fear of him because the people resonate with his message (all encapsulated in a speech anything but the length of the Beatitudes).
At the final inquisition he remains virtually silent, until they proceed to strip him and fasten him to a torture device. Placing electrodes on his wrists, ankles, hips, and shoulders, they come to discover their dependency upon him even in this. It is only by his leave and knowledge that they can operate the machinery. His suffering has dignity, and his disciples, chief of whom is a female figure, bear him away to a place he has prepared for them—somewhere safe and far removed from the chaotic consequence that is the result of rejecting the Source of intelligibility in the world.
As an Armageddon ensues and the world descends into the chaos of its own rejection of order and reason, while in the company of those whom he chose out of the world, Galt pronounces a benediction as he traces the Sign of the Dollar over the world as it implodes. He then promises a new world dawning at the close of Atlas Shrugged.
Of course just because a superficial outline resembles the Christ story does not Galt a Christ figure make. Indeed, as his whole ethos is the antithesis of Christianity -“a benediction as he traces the Sign of the Dollar”- is it not more realistic to speak of an Antichrist figure?
But according to Fr Sirico, Rand, growing up in prerevolutionary Russia, absorbed, as if by osmosis, the Christianity that was in the air. Never mind that as a Jew she would have been much more likely to have been inoculated against any Christian influence, as that Christianity was too often tainted with anti-Semitism.
Fr Sirico must know this is a stretch, as he even quotes Chesterton, someone who loathed the free market ideology Sirico promotes, to make his strained point: “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.”
That may be so; the man walking into the brothel is seeking, in an inchoate way, an approximation of beauty, of human connection, of ecstasy. Ultimately, in his confused way, he is seeking love, union with the Other. But the man walking into the counting house is not moved by eros; he is moved by greed and avarice and the only lust in him is lust for power. By its nature this vice cuts him off from communion with others. Indeed, it is sovereign individualism that is at the heart of Rand’s “philosophy”.
Of course Fr Sirico, who would lose all credibility as a Catholic otherwise, eschews much of Rand’s thought :
“I disagree profoundly with Rand; her attenuated definition of faith as unreason and her notion of sacrifice as wholly lacking dignity are unrecognizable to a Christian. Even her economics are better spelled out in Mises or Hayek. Her esthetic philosophy is paper thin and idiosyncratic; her malevolence toward children and the vulnerable is exceedingly distasteful.”
Indeed, he eschews so much it is not clear what is left to revere. But his reverence is obvious, and just as confused as the woman he admires.
But you can read the whole sorry mess here:
I’ve always been surprised Atlas Shrugged didn’t spawn a religion ala Dianetics. Then again, it’s an easy argument that’s what Anton Lavey did.
I don’t think you actually read this book, my friend and mentor. I am beginning to think you are falling into the temptation of my fundamentalist friends in assuming your identity with what you are comfortable with instead of what is true. I hope this is not the case.
You surprise me, Paul. You are sympathetic to Ayn Rand? And you think Fr Sirico has a
point?
Please clarify.
The interesting thing about the torture scene at the end of Atlas Shrugged is that Rand clearly intended it to be compared with the suffering of Christ. In order for her to present Galt as the ideal Objectivist hero, he had to be tested and pass through the fire, as it were. Her other characters suffer too, in their own annoying ways: usually from lack of sleep because they’re darting around running big business in between rapine flings.
The problem with Galt as a Christ-figure (aside from the fact that Rand’s philosophy is wildly divergent from Christianity) is that he has nothing to offer the suffering sinner except for the show of his own strength. This is nothing new. You could just as well watch the torture scene in Braveheart, to be inspired by a show of resilience. Obviously, I like to think that I would be heroically stoic if ever strapped to some sort of evil electronic pain-machine, but supposing I am not? Supposing I fail? What if I crack under pressure and betray those dearest to me. It happens. Because we are weak as well as strong, and because we need redemption, not just an inspiring show of strength. Also we need love, and John Galt does not love us. It’s not written into his nature to do so.
If we go back to old Mortimer Adler on reading then sure I have read Atlas Shrugged from beginning to end. But I would think that only a disturbed intellect or someone under some sort of compulsion would read the work from beginning to end without a heavy amount of skimming. It is one of the most banally repetitive novels I have ever encountered, with the sort of cheap, trinket like didacticism that befits the minds of her followers.
So, you don’t have a serious argument to present. Rather you choose to scoff and walk away.
Highly convincing.
I have presented my serious arguments here and elsewhere. Here I am simply mocking the ridiculous assertion that Galt is a Christ figure.
Fr. Sirico is a strange man.
He has no formal economics degree, even though he once said he did and then removed that “item” from his online references when people found out. Yet Catholics eat up everything he says on economics.
He pontificates on sexual morals, yet he once performed the first gay “marriage” in the US. There are photographs. Google it.
Even the Vatican and FUS have been bamboozled.
Can’t Catholics use a simple search engine for Pete’s sake??? The whole thing makes us look completely gullible and stupid.
PS, Among serious academic philosophers who actually have COLLEGE DEGREES in the subject (and not some other subject), Ayn Rand is considered a joke. She’s not a real philosopher. Rather, she’s an idealogue.