Catholicism's Claim to the Hemisphere Hypothesis

Introducing the Catholic Hemisphere

Part Two of Two (Part One can be found here)

Straight explanations are dryer than Las Vegas in July (unless you're standing in front of the Bellagio Fountains), but I guess I need to explain the Hemisphere Hypothesis. You can find my full explanation here, but here's a summary:

Iain McGilchrist published his bestseller, The Master and His Emissary, in 2009. He followed it with his massive two-volume The Matter with Things, in 2021.

They're daunting and nuanced works, but they can be boiled down to three points:

1. The left hemispheres and right hemispheres of our brains do the same things.

2. But they approach things differently: they attend to the world differently. The left hemisphere is the servant ("emissary"). It is the hemisphere that gets things done; it carries out tasks. The right hemisphere is the master. It sends the left hemisphere into the world with the tasks and then "hangs back" and reads poetry, listens to fine music, and attends to the greater good (while the left hemisphere is out there, grappling in the mud).

3. Even though the right hemisphere is supposed to be the master, the left hemisphere has usurped the master's role. Modern culture is a left-hemispheric culture, creating all sorts of problems.

About the Catholic Hemisphere

I should be clear: McGilchrist's Hemisphere Hypothesis isn't Catholic. It isn't even religious. If I had to put it in a category, I'd say it's "applied science." It's neuroscience applied to studies in humanities (history, philosophy, literature) to create a useful understanding of the world, including modernity.

Catholicism, on the other hand, is a religion, which is an area where McGilchrist treads lightly (reserved for the last chapter of his massive two-volume tome).

Catholicism is also the intersection between the world and heaven, Christ's ark to carry as many souls as possible. It is a worldly institution with other-worldly aims. And it was instituted by God Himself.

So here's the thing: Catholicism isn't just a religion. It is the Thing that encompasses all things. The only thing that falls outside its all-encompassing reality is non-reality: falsity, evil, ugliness.

The Hemisphere Hypothesis--being chockful of truth, reality, and beauty--belongs to Catholicism.

The Hemisphere Hypothesis is as symbiotic with Catholicism as the Bellagio fountains and other attractions are to the Las Vegas strip. The Las Vegas strip doesn't need the attractions, and it would exist without them, but they certainly enhance the experience.

Such it is with the Hemisphere Hypothesis. It enhances the world and, thereby, enhances Catholicism, especially in these troubled modern times.

Catholicism and Modernity are Sworn Enemies. The Hemisphere Hypothesis Explains Why . . . and Takes Catholicism's Side

I don't care what anyone says: Modernity and Catholicism are enemies.

When I say "modernity," I'm not talking spatially or temporally; I'm not referring to "modern times" or "today's world." I'm talking specifically about a mindset, an attitude, an approach to things.

This theme will drive many of my pieces here at Catholic 365 and I can't possibly explain it here, but it boils down to this:

Modernity is the era of the left hemisphere's usurpation of the right hemisphere's rightful role as the master (this is McGilchrist's theme). Modernity is also the era that rejected the Catholic Church (Stalin: "How many divisions does the Pope have?").

It's not a coincidence.

As a result, there are a shocking number of parallels between the Hemisphere Hypothesis and the Church, including their criticisms of modernity, and the Hemisphere Hypothesis (riding contemporary science) repeatedly vindicates Catholic theology, spirituality, and practice.

For this, we owe McGilchrist a huge dose of appreciation.

In return, we can help McGilchrist. McGilchrist himself is delightfully agnostic on ultimate causes. The Catholic Church supplies those and, in the process, completes McGilchrist.

The Hemisphere Hypothesis Explains the Sacraments, the Saints, and Maybe Even Christ Himself

I suspect there is nothing in Catholicism that isn't better understood through the lens of the Hemisphere Hypothesis. The Bible, the liturgy, music, etc.

For now, just four examples:

The Hemisphere Hypothesis is thoroughly sacramental. McGilchrist repeatedly emphasizes that reality is both bodily and mental. It is body and soul combined. He mocks Descartes (the man who separated body and soul, thereby destroying a sense of the sacramental in modernity) and speculates that Descartes may have been nuts.

The Hemisphere Hypothesis explains the saints. These are men and women with a proper balance between the hemispheres, where the right hemisphere firmly rules the left hemisphere (modernity is the opposite: a world men and women whose left hemispheres rule the right).

I suspect the Hemisphere Hypothesis might even help explain the two natures of Christ, but I won't tread here further. Such a thing is ultimately a mystery and has occupied the greatest minds for nearly 2,000 years and has produced a lot of heretics. I don't want to be numbered among them.

The Hemisphere Hypothesis explains why Catholicism so often finds itself out of step with modernity. Catholicism reflects the right hemisphere as the master. Modernity reflects the left hemisphere as the usurper. Once we see this, we see how better to adapt, both as a Church and individually.

The Hemisphere Hypothesis Helps Catholics Flourish

That last example introduces the real theme of the Catholic Hemisphere: Helping Catholics survive in enemy territory (modernity) by understanding why it's enemy territory. And once Catholics learn how to survive in enemy territory, they can learn to thrive there as well.

I'll be flushing it all out without bogging the reader down with too many details from the Hemisphere Hypothesis.

We are, after all, fighting in enemy territory. We need to be guerrillas and guerrillas travel light. Although we need to carry a few tools, we mostly just need a large set of skills. I'll try my best to supply both.