Angelus News | January 14, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 1

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being replaced
by social media
“influencers,”
artists by entertainers,
ideas by
fads, reflection
by distraction,
and faith by false
optimism.
But Illich wasn’t
just saying that
standards have
dropped or that
values have
changed. His critique
of modernity
goes much
Ivan Illich. | WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
deeper than
that. The way
we think and the words we think with
have themselves been so corrupted by
new disciplines and systems that their
common meaning no longer gives us
a way out from the ideologies within
which they have become embedded.
Try to talk to a school superintendent
about curriculum or a politician about
legislation without using jargon; it’s
impossible.
Illich’s motto “the corruption of
the best is the worst” applies to the
Church as much as it does to any
other modern institution. We already
see our culture being increasingly
“de-churched” — or rather, we see
churches being replaced by secular
rituals and forms of worship from
sporting events to foodie events to
celebrity idolatry.
The new form of Christian prophecy
Illich declared has migrated to friendship
— honesty communicated one to
one, heart to heart, friend to friend.
I must admit here that I am not
doing justice to Illich as a stylist or to
the “sparkle” of his prose, nor to the
careful eloquence of Cayley’s analysis.
As a friend of Illich, Cayley’s book
carries forward and, in many ways,
completes the vision Illich had not
the time in his relatively short life to
fully elaborate and explain.
Born in an Art Deco mansion in
Vienna with four different languages
as his mother tongue, Illich was exiled
from Europe during World War II and
wound up in the slums of New York
and, later, in collectives in Mexico
and Puerto Rico.
Watching him being interviewed
by a French journalist on YouTube,
Illich comes across as a charming,
humble, and self-effacing man. To
hear him propose surprisingly radical
and liberating ideas made it sometimes
hard to believe my own ears.
This is why Cayley’s book is so necessary:
It is important for us to know
who Illich was and what he truly stood
for before his genius is misappropriated
again by those with a superficial
understanding of what he stood for
and who did not know him personally.
Former California Gov. (and onetime
Jesuit seminarian) Jerry Brown
described Illich, his friend and adviser,
as “not your standard intellectual.”
“His home,” Brown tells us, “was not
in the academy and his work forms no
part of an approved curriculum. He
issued no manifestos and his utterly
original writings both confound and
clarify as they examine one modern
assumption after another. He is radical
in the most fundamental sense of the
word and therefore not welcome on
any reading list.”
Surely David Cayley’s masterful new
appreciation will help correct this
inhospitality.
Robert Inchausti is professor emeritus
of English at Cal Poly, San Luis
Obispo, and the author of several
books, including “Thomas Merton’s
American Prophecy,” and “Subversive
Orthodoxy.”
AMAZON
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