"technology is never merely technology. It reveals man and his aspirations"

"Technology — it is worth emphasizing — is a profoundly human reality, linked to the autonomy and freedom of man. In technology we express and confirm the hegemony of the spirit over matter. 'The human spirit, "increasingly free of its bondage to creatures, can be more easily drawn to the worship and contemplation of the Creator"'. Technology enables us to exercise dominion over matter, to reduce risks, to save labour, to improve our conditions of life. It touches the heart of the vocation of human labour: in technology, seen as the product of his genius, man recognizes himself and forges his own humanity. Technology is the objective side of human action whose origin and raison d'etre is found in the subjective element: the worker himself. For this reason, technology is never merely technology. It reveals man and his aspirations [(technica ars numquam est tantummodo technica ars. Hominem ipsa ostendit eiusque . . . proclivitatem)] towards development [(ad progressionem)], it expresses the inner tension that impels him gradually to overcome material limitations. Technology, in this sense, is a response to God's command to till and to keep the land (cf. Gen 2:15) that he has entrusted to humanity, and it must serve to reinforce the covenant between human beings and the environment, a covenant that should mirror God's creative love."

But "technology can [also] be understood as a manifestation of absolute freedom, the freedom that seeks to prescind from the limits inherent in things. The process of globalization could replace ideologies with technology, allowing the latter to become an ideological power that threatens to confine us within an a priori that holds us back from encountering being and truth. Were that to happen, we would all know, evaluate and make decisions about our life situations from within a technocratic cultural perspective to which we would belong structurally, without ever being able to discover a meaning that is not of our own making."

     Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate (29 June 2009), part 6, secs. 69-70.  But as the Latin makes clear, these "aspirations" are but a single "proclivity," and that towards progress.  So the But of secs. 70 and following has to do with a potential corruption of that rooted in the desire for "absolute freedom".

"I am the resurrection and the life."

"All the efforts of technology [(technicae artis)], however beneficial, cannot allay human anxiety, and the prolongation of biological life [(biologica longaevitas)] cannot assuage the essential longing of the human heart for further life [(ulterioris vitae)]."

     Gaudium et spes 18, as trans. in Tanner.  But shouldn't "ulterioris vitae" have been rendered "the life to come"?  "ulterior" is not an especially biblical term, but 1) the contrast is between "longaevitas" on the one hand, and "vita" on the other, while 2) "ulterior" can mean "that which lies beyond" or "is still to come."

"he raiseth up the soul, and enlighteneth the eyes, and giveth health, and life, and blessing."

Ravenna, Museo Arcivescovile,
Cathedra of Archbishop Maximian

ἀνυψῶν ψυχὴν καὶ φωτίζων ὀφθαλμούς, ἴασιν διδούς, ζωὴν καὶ εὐλογίαν.

     Sir 34:20 DRA (=34:17 RSV).  DR 1610:  "exalting the soule, and illuminating the eies, giuing health, and life, and blessing."  Benjamin G. Wright's New English Translation (of the Septuagint) looks a bit closer to the Vulgate

exaltans animam et inluminans oculos dans sanitatem vitam et benedictionem

in some respects than to the Septuagint:  "one who uplifts the soul and enlightens eyes, gives healing of life and blessing."

"The certainties of physics might establish an intellectual foundation, and philosophical ambiguities may delight, but not much compares to the roar of a bike."

     Matthew B.Crawford, as quoted in The chronicle of higher education, 8 April 2015.

"doxological contrition"

"From my youth, O Saviour, I have rejected Thy commandments.  Ruled by the passions, I have passed my whole life in heedlessness and sloth.  Therefore I cry to Thee, O Saviour, even now at the end:  Save me."

Ἐκ νεότητος Σωτὴρ, τὰς ἐντολάς σου ἐπαρωσάμην, ὅλον ἐμπαθῶς, ἀμελῶν ῥᾳθυμῶν, παρῆλθον τὸν βίον·  διὸ κράζω σοι Σωτήρ·  Κᾂν ἐν τῷ τέλει σῶσόν με.

     St. Andrew of Crete, The Great Canon, Tone six, Canticle one, Mattins, Thursday in the Fifth Week of Lent; The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (South Canaan, PA:  St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2002), 380.  Greek:  Triōdion katanyktikon, periechon hapasantēn anēkousan autō akolouthian tēs Hagias kai Megalēs Tessarakostēs.  Apo tēs Kyriakēs tou telōnou kai tou Pharisaiou, mechri tou Hagiou kai Megalou Savvatou . . . , 4th ed.(Venice:  Ek tou Hellēnikou typ. ho Phoinix, 1876), 259 (the translators of The Lenton Triodion give their own original at the top of p. 66).  The wonderful phrase "doxological contrition" I have taken from a 7 September 2019 Thomistic Institute lecture by Fr. Khaled Anatolios entitled "Salvation:  a view from the Byzantine liturgy," which also put me onto this passage. 

"Joy to the world"

"from its very beginning Christianity has been the proclamation of joy, of the only possible joy on earth.  It rendered impossible all joy we usually think of as possible.  But within this possibility, at the very bottom of this darkness, it announced and conveyed a new all-embracing joy, and with this joy it transformed the End into a Beginning.  Without the proclamation of this joy Christianity is incomprehensible.  It is only as joy that the Church was victorious in the world, and it lost the world when it lost that joy, and ceased to be a credible witness to it.  Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy."

     Alexander Schmemann, For the life of the world:  sacraments and Orthodoxy, 2nd rev. & expanded ed. (New York:  St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1973), 24.  I was reminded of this passage by Fr. Khaled Anatolios, whose 7 September 2019 Thomistic Institute lecture "Salvation:  a view from the Byzantine liturgy," which speaks of (among other things) "doxological contrition", is a helpful attempt to take up the senses in which joy must of course be a Christian experience (summarized from 39:45, or, more specifically, 40:50).

"A church is a building meant for a purpose served by no building we know."

     Richard Kieckhefer, Theology in stone:  church architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), 69, on "The Central Paradox:  An Unbloodied Altar".