Reading the Vulgate I run across the Latin word simulacrum which has implications of a mask-like deceptiveness, of intellectual cheating, of an ideological shell-game. The word simulacrum, it seems to me, presents itself as a very suggestive one to describe an advertisement, or an over-inflated political presence, or that face on the TV screen. The word shimmers, grins, cajoles. It is a fine word for something monumentally phony. It occurs for instance in the last line of the First Epistle of John. But there it is usually translated as idols,” “Little Children, watch out for the simulacra!” -watch out for the national, the regional, the institutional images!
Does it not occur to us that if, in fact, we live in a society which is par excellence that of the simulacrum, we are the champion idolaters of all history? No, it does not occur to us, because for us an idol is nothing more than a harmless Greek statue, complete with a figleaf, in the corner of the museum. We have given up worrying about idols-as well as devils. And we are living in the age of science. How could we, the most emancipated of men, be guilty of superstition? Could science itself be our number one superstition?
You see where my rambling has brought me. To this: we are under judgement. And what for? For the primal sin. We are idolaters. We make simulacra and we hypnotize ourselves with our skill in creating these mental movies that do not appear to be idols because they are so alive! Because we are idolaters, because we have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the semblance of the likeness of mortal man, of birds, of quadrupeds, of reptiles …” we fulfill all the other requirements of those who are under God’s wrath, as catalogued by Paul in Romans 1: 24-32.
Thomas Merton, OCSO
Faith and Violence, pp. 152-53
