Christian Philosophy 

Squeezing Catholicism Into a

Secular Mold [1]

 

In the last decades Catholic theology, education, and pastoral care

have been heavily influenced by the secular culture

 

by James Hitchcock[2]

 

 

In the following report, James Hitchcock gives not an overall picture of American Catholicism but an assessment of how it is being reshaped by secular American culture. His report is an instructive analysis of ways that church bodies today are susceptible to a rapid spread of uncertainty and confusion regarding historic Christian teaching.

 

Secularizing influences on the Church

 

A quarter of a century ago detached observers might have suggested that the Roman Catholic Church in the United States would remain relatively immune from secularizing influences, if only because church leaders, going back over a century, had incessantly warned against it.

Ø      Until about 1965 it was still common for Catholics to hear Sunday sermons about secularism, and most Catholics were probably sensitized at least to its more obvious manifestations.

 

All that changed abruptly around the time of the Second Vatican Council, for reasons too complex to be untangled in a short space.

Ø      The council itself, in its decree "The Church in the Modern World," proposed a demanding and subtle course of action for Catholics of the late 20th century.

Ø      They were to be open to everything good and authentic in the modern world, recognizing that modern culture in its deepest being yearns for truth and justice, and that the shortcomings of that culture are caused by the thwarting of those yearnings.

Recognize that humanity's sublimest hopes and ambitions become hideously deformed if divorced their source and end - God.

 

The message conveyed to people beginning in the early 1960's often stressed the first part of the council's summons but not the second.

Ø      A variety of historical conditions which happened to come together all at once - Catholics' upward social and economic mobility in the United States, for example, and the election of a Catholic as president in 1960­- caused many people to think that

their faith simply meant being a good human being, pursuing worldly goals in worldly ways, and assuming that thereby they were fulfilling God's plan for them.

 

Leadership failure

How the clergy reacted - Unhappily, the clergy, who should have called people back to their authentic faith, were often among those leading them away from it.

Ø      Thousands of priests and nuns abandoned their callings after 1965, themselves victims of a false understanding of the Christian vocation in the modern world. (Per­haps the best example of this is the familiar figure of the priest who returned to school to become a psychologist, having decided that therapeutic counseling was more important than spiritual direction.)

It is likely that every denomination undergoes secularization in its own way, primarily through a process by which some people carry to extremes elements in the denomination's tradition which in themselves are valid.

 

Historically, the Catholic Church has shown considerable respect for human achievement, and has encouraged what can legitimately be called Christian humanism.

Ø      The church has always been prepared to accept, and even to assimilate, what was best in art and philosophy, for example.

Ø      Prevailing Catholic doctrine taught that God usually works through natural means, so that his children must study the book of the world in order to comprehend his ways.

Ø      Wrongly understood, this could easily degenerate into a willingness to make each human art or science fully autonomous - not in any way subject to divine authority.

This secularizing process has proceeded on two levels, related but distinct - the intellectual and the popular.

 

Going beyond all Limits

 

It is true what the economist J .M. Keynes once said - the man who prides himself on his down-to­-earth practical wisdom is often, unknowingly, a follower of some "long-dead scribbler."

Ø      In 1907, Pope Pius X condemned what he called modernism in the church - certain theological tendencies which in essence made faith subordinate to changing cultural and historical conditions.

Ø      The condemnation was apparently effective, and for more than 50 years afterwards there was little sign of overt het­erodoxy in Catholic thought.

Ø      However, all that changed very rapidly after 1965, when many Catholic thinkers entered a period of reaction against the limits that had been set.

 

Much of the intellectual influence came from liberal Protestantism.

Ø      Catholic scholars seemed to be trying to "catch up" in their efforts at relativizing the authority of the scriptures through historical criticism, borrowing wholesale from philosophies which in some cases were overtly antireligious, coming to terms with modern phenomena like the "sexual revolution."

 

Has God revealed himself?

 

For those Catholics who pay attention to ideas, the most influential thinkers of the past 20 years (for example, Hans Kung) have been saying that

Ø      very little in traditional religious faith is intellectually credible and that it is now necessary to redefine faith wholesale, essentially in very secular ways.

 

è The key issue, which affects Catholics and Protestants equally, is divine revelation.

-        Many modern religious thinkers do not believe that God has, in fact, revealed himself to mankind.

-        They conceive of religion as itself a human product, the expression of mankind's developing search for meaning.

Ø      Thus nothing in religion has any final authority.

Not only may everything be changed to suit the needs of the times, it must be.

 

This conscious, intellectual secularizing has had a devastating effect because it has penetrated deeply into the seminaries where priests are trained,

Ø      into Catholic colleges and universities where lay people are trained,

Ø      into a majority of Catholic publications,

Ø      into many Catholic professional organizations, and into the programs which church agencies sponsor in order to update clergy and laity.

It has become the case that officially sponsored meetings of this kind may actually exclude speakers who can be counted on to make a vigorous defense of official doctrine in disputed areas.

 

Ideas have trickled down to the masses of believers within a remarkably short period of time, to the point where

Ø      even Catholics who never read books and rarely even articles on a popular level, who seldom attend speeches or workshops, have nonetheless imbibed, sometimes in a hopelessly garbled and distorted form, all kinds of notions which are traceable to pedigreed sources.

 

The over­whelming message which the ordinary Catholic received following Vatican II was simply that "the church has changed,"

Ø      and most people seem to have no firm principles for distinguishing authentic from inauthentic change.

Ø      Some people seem to think that the message of the church is that everything pre­viously forbidden is now permitted, while every­thing previously affirmed is now called into ques­tion.

 

Some people seem to reason, for example, that if the church now allows meat on Fridays it will also in due time allow divorce and remarriage.

Ø      However, the trickling down of ideas would not be nearly so harmful if it were not for the fact that those ideas reinforce certain popular tendencies already present.

Ø      One of the most diabolical aspects of religious movements which promise a false renewal is that they pander to what people want to hear, reinforcing an easy worldliness.

 

Vague religious education

Religious education, since it aims to reach all members of the church without exception, and shapes the religious faith of children in a definitive way, is obviously crucial.

Ø      Since the Vatican Council some of this education has called traditional beliefs into question and has done much damage to faith.

Ø      This occurs somewhat through textbooks and other formal course material, but perhaps even more in the ways that classroom teaching is sometimes carried out.

Ø      However, even more common has been the kind of religious education which is content to take the merely human as its starting point, and which never gets very far beyond that.

 

Thus updated catechetical programs mainly con­centrate on readily identifiable human concerns, both personal and social.

Ø      They focus on themes like friendship, family relationships, enjoyment of na­ture, racial harmony, and social responsibility.

Catechetical theorists insist that the only meaning­ful instruction which can be given young people is that which starts with what is "real" in their world.

 

Religious themes are then interwoven only to the extent that they seem to relate to humanistic concerns.

Ø      Instead of offering children a systematic introduction to scripture, for example, such programs commonly cite only those biblical passages which seem to relate to human problems or challenges.

Ø      Most significantly, scripture is not used to elevate the students' understanding to an entirely new plane of existence but merely to reinforce ideas which even sincere nonbelievers are likely to have already arrived at.

 

Thus students who go through certain catechetical programs now widely used in Catholic schools may emerge with

Ø      no clear idea that Jesus was the Son of God or that he came to earth to redeem mankind,

Ø      nor, in fact, why mankind even needed to be redeemed. (Sin is not a favorite topic in these programs.)

Rather than religious education serving to orient the child's entire life towards God, refer­ences to God are used to keep the attention firmly fixed on the here and now, the merely human.

 

Religious educators may sincerely think they are thereby showing how faith is relevant to life, but often they are doing the opposite.

Ø      As students get older, the connection between formal religion and vaguely humanitarian concerns may come to seem arbitrary, something added on unnecessarily.

Ø      Many of them are likely to conclude that they have no need of religion in order to live in a friendly, understanding, responsible way with their neighbors.

Ø      Much of the content of traditional religion remains unintelligible and meaningless to young people simply because its meaning  was never taught.

 

In some cases this highly secularized kind of religious instruction is favored because its exponents have themselves experienced a loss of faith or deep confusion about the meaning of their faith. In other cases, however, it may proceed from mere timidity.

 

Ruling out the supernatural

Contemporary catechetics has been heavily influ­enced by secular theories in education and psychol­ogy.

Ø      The foundations of those theories leave no room for the supernatural, for the possibility of a genuine divine revelation.

Ø      By their very nature they can have no other referents than secular ones.

Ø      Thus to allow such theories to determine the nature of religious education is automatically to rule out whatever cannot be fitted into the secular procrus­tean bed. T

The secular sciences can be helpful in religious education. They should never be allowed to dominate.

 

What is true of religious education is also true, to a great extent, of general pastoral strategy in the church.

Ø      Many priests, for example, draw mainly on psychology when they counsel people or give spiri­tual direction.

Ø      They are not certain that there are any supernatural truths which they can invoke or, if there are, whether it is proper to do so.

 

When moral issues like homosexuality are addressed, discussion is likely to focus almost exclusively on the degree to which such practices cause psychological harm to those involved,

Ø      with the priest reluctant to state authoritatively that the practice is wrong because it transgresses God's law.

Thus sinners easily rational­ize their sins by convincing themselves that they are not "hurting anybody."

 

Many priests have also been persuaded that absolute moral judgments are psychologically bad for people and that Christianity has itself sinned in inculcating guilt.

Ø      There is often an assumption, spoken or unspoken, that the chief aim of all counseling or direction is to enable people to "feel good about themselves" or to "come to terms with their feelings."

Ø      Such assumptions cut the whole moral ground out from under pastoral work.

They rest on further assumptions which mark a radical and complete break with the Christian past. Often they are traceable back to theorists such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers, and Eric Fromm, who were actively hostile to religion.

 

A new mentality

 

Lay people are highly susceptible to such teaching and preaching because to a great extent it reinforces what they want to believe.

Ø      Indeed, the whole point of certain so-called "pastoral" approaches to reli­gion is to enable people to live comfortable, essentially worldly lives, with no sense of guilt.

Ø      The prolonged prosperity of the era since World War II has had a lot to do with the effective secularization of American life, and it is noticeable among Catholics precisely because as a group Cath­olics have rather dramatically "made it" during that same post-war period.

 

At first this prosperity and success may have strengthened religious belief by instilling in people a sense of gratitude. 

Ø      But a later generation, which takes prosperity for granted, seems to have grown up with a mentality which takes self-gratification for granted.

Ø      Many prosperous Americans are people who do not like to say NO to themselves, who believe that it is their duty to gratify all their "needs," which are increasingly indistinguishable from mere whims.

 

They are resistant to calls to duty, self-sacrifice, self-discipline, penance, and repentance. They want to enjoy all the good things of life without worry or doubt.

 

Such attitudes are most obviously expressed with respect to sexual morality, where people now, in effect, demand the

Ø      "right" to divorce, abortion, artificial contraception, and intercourse outside marriage, without even a shadow of moral disapproval.

Ø      But it also manifests itself in a deep resistance to a truly supernatural religion, to any form of religion which claims genuine authority based on divine revelation.

Ø      Fundamentally, many Catholics do not want to be reminded too emphatically of the reality of the supernatural, because they do not wish to be "distracted" from their worldly lives. They do not want even to consider the possibility that they may have to reorient their lives in fundamentally different ways from the way they have.

 

They like the idea that they find God in all sorts of worldly experiences, because it relieves them of the responsibility of really seeking him.

 

"Radical" Christians?

 

In one respect only is there an apparent exception to this easy worldliness - the so-called social gospel. Here many Catholics insist that the demands of faith are radical and severe.

Ø      Those who claim that the gospel does not allow Christians blindly to accept the prevailing political and economic systems of their society are quite correct.

Ø      With some exceptions, however, these "radical" Christians are obviously secular in their own inspiration. It is by no means clear that they take their lead from scripture or the historical teachings of the Catholic Church.

Rather they are devotees of currently fashionable, mainly leftist political movements, and they simply use theological ideas to dress up those movements.

 

A simple test is to inquire what politically radical Christians believe about other areas of life where religious values conflict with the spirit of the world, notably sexual morality.

Ø      With some exceptions, leftist Christians are likely also to take a liberal view on issues like abortion and homosexuality.

Their faith is essentially formed by the prevailing opinions found, for example, on college campuses.

 

Individual Christians may have an intense per­sonal faith but still lead secular lives, if they do not permit that faith to influence the way they relate to their society.

Ø      The public arena has for a long time been the site of a sustained and powerful attack on religious values, manifested in public education and the mass media and in disputes over political issues like the legalization and public funding of abortion.

 

Many people who consider themselves devout be­lievers nonetheless unquestionably accept a secularist view of public life, one which is false even to the history of the American political system.

Ø      They meekly accept the idea that they ought not to "impose" their own beliefs on other people, a formula which serves to rationalize a refusal to accept responsibility for the spread of God's kingdom.

 

As noted, these problems have deeply institutionalized themselves in American Catholicism over a period of nearly two decades.

Ø      The picture is by no means uniform, but what has been described here is true of entire religious orders, schools and colleges, parishes, even whole dioceses.

Ø      Pope John Paul II has ordered special investigations into the state of American seminaries and religious orders. The problems, however, are deeply rooted and will not be solved quickly.

 

For some years the leadership of the American bishops has also appeared weak. There has been no consensus as to what course to pursue with regard to any of these problems, and some bishops have actively supported those who undermine authentic faith.

Ø      Even bishops who are personally orthodox and aware of the problems have sometimes believed themselves powerless to act and have rationalized and excused even severe abuses.

Ø      All this may be changing, however, since it is clear that Pope John Paul has a special concern about American Catholicism and is prepared to act on his concern.

Last fall he strongly urged Amer­ican bishops to maintain firmly the church's positions on controversial questions, and he has been appointing bishops in the United States who seem prepared to do so.

 

There are many hopeful signs in American Catholicism, including a resurgence - in some cases a rediscovery - of faith on the part of young people.

Ø      Solidly faithful religious orders are in a flourishing state. Many lay people long for the restoration of order and want to be fed solid spiritual food.

The end of the century, which will also be the end of the second Christian millennium, is likely to see a stronger Catholic Church in the United States than the one which exists now, even if the surrounding culture is even more secular than it is now.