Catholicism, The Sleeping Giant
Editorial FAITH Magazine May-June 1997 by Tim Finigan
Vincent Miceli’s inspired title The God’s of Atheism summed up perfectly the problem for evangelisation of the early 1970s which was a period of mature decay in the Christian culture of the West. The spiritual emptiness and hunger left by the rejection of the Church was filled by the alternatives of pleasure, power, wealth and other substitute divinities.
Fr Roger Nesbitt recently referred to Soth East England as “the most secular corner of the planet”. In his encyclical Tertio Millennio Adveniente, Pope John Paul has outlined eloquently the climate which gives rise to this judgment
How can we remain silent, for example, about the religious indifference which causes many people today to live as if God did not exist or to be content with a vague religiosity, incapable of coming to grips with the question of truth and the requirement of consistency? To this must also be added the widespread loss of the transcendent sense of human life and confusion in the ethical sphere, even about the fundamental values of respect for life and the family. The sons and daughters of the church, too, need to examine themselves in this regard. To what extent have they been shaped by the climate of secularism and ethical relativism? And what responsibility do they bear, in view of the increasing lack of religion, for not having shown the true face of God, by having “failed in their religious, moral or social life”? (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 36)
Sadly, from the late 1960s onwards, the response of the Church in many places was not so much to vindicate anew the claims of Christ but to attempt to tone down its message in order to make it more palatable to such tastes. The inevitable results are still very much with us as our mass attendance figures continue in freefall. The defeatist policy “planning for fewer priests” is possibly even premature since there are now so few practising Catholics to minister to that in some areas there is even a surplus of clergy.
Outside the Church there is an almost total lack of information about the basis of her teaching. A few issues are known in broad terms—the Church is against contraception and women priests, good at prayers and counselling—but almost nothing is known of the reasons for her teaching. Within the Church we can see the factors which make this ignorance difficult to overcome. We are now well into the second generation of parents affected by what was known as the “New Catechetics” in the 1970s. Among the parents there is a lot of residual faith and goodwill but very little knowledge of even the basics. The exceptions have often come about through good Catholic teachers either ignoring official policy or resolutely fighting against it.
There has been no substantial change of policy in more recent catechetical material. The disastrous Corpus Christi College line which we so resolutely opposed in the early 1970s has given birth to the Our Faith Story and National Project approach which is official policy in most dioceses today. In the rumoured replacement for Weaving the Web, there needs to be a fundamental rethink in terms of basic philosophy. It is no good pretending that nothing was really wrong and inserting quotes from the Catechism into a scheme that adopts the same approach. We do not ask for public renunciation and a communist show trial but we do need a genuine reform.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church of course provides us with a magnificent basis on which to build such a reform. As a providential gift to the Church in a time of great need, it places the second Vatican Council clearly in its context. Pope John Paul sumnmed this up in his encyclical Tertio Millennio Adveniente
The Second Vatican Council is often considered as the beginning of a new era in the life of the church. This is true, but at the same time it is difficult to overlook the fact that the council drew much from the experiences and reflections of the immediate past, especially from the intellectual legacy left by Pius XII. In the history of the church, the “old” and the “new” are always closely interwoven. The “new” grows out of the “old,” and the “old” finds a fuller expression in the “new.” (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 17)
Perhaps future generations will find it difficult to see this as anything other than blindingly obvious. For the moment, this continuity with the past is something we need to be reminded of, if only to counteract many years of indoctrination that everything before 1965 must be treated with suspicion.
With the tremendous resource of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we have, at last, the means to inform every educated person on the basic teaching of the Catholic Church. Often, little else is needed. The Catholic faith has been so comprehensively caricatured and trivialised by the media that when it is presented in the rational and clear manner of the Catechism, it is not uncommon for people to question whether this is really the teaching of the Church or some cosmetic counterfeit. If it can be allowed to dawn on an interested enquirer that this is indeed an authentic expression of the legacy of the Church from its dawn to the present day, developing organically without any substantial change, it is an awesome phenomenon. To be a part of it can suddenly seem imperative. Such is the experience of many converts to the faith many of whom then turn with a sense of anger and ask why they were never allowed to know this before.
Earlier, the Pope’s description of secular climate was quoted. He continued in the same section to analyse the reason for the lack of response from the Church:
It cannot be denied that for many Christians the spiritual life is passing through a time of uncertainty which affects not only their moral life but also their life of prayer and the theological correctness of their faith. Faith, already put to the test by the challenges of our times, is sometimes disoriented by erroneous theological views, the spread of which is abetted by the crisis of obedience vis-a-vis the church’s magisterium. (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 36)
As with the description of secularism, many will recognise this crisis in the life of the Church. The crisis of obedience to the Church’s magisterium is itself seldom well understood. It is usually portrayed in terms of the valiant freedom fighter against the wizened monsignori of the Vatican. For the Catholic, of course, obedience to the magisterium of the Church is a much greater thing than a respect for “Vatican directives”. Obedience to the magisterium is obedience to Christ and a direct challenge to the magisterium is opposition to Christ. The idea of magisterial teaching can only make sense if it is teaching with divine authority.
Although there continue to be many elements of crisis in the life of the Church in the affluent west, there are hopeful signs as we near the millennium. A renewed sense of brotherhood and a willingness to work together on the part of many priests is a most heartening development in the Church at the level of the ordinary parish. We are not trotskyists and we do not need to smash in order to rebuild. It is indeed possible to recognise the mistakes of the past and to build on the goodwill and humility that is at the disposal of the Church, especially among those who work in the pastoral sphere.
What is necessary is a return to the roots of our culture and a new presentation of the Christian faith that is true to those roots. Again, the Holy Father puts his finger on the problem:
[…] as the encyclical Redemptoris Missio affirms, the modern world reflects the situation of the Areopagus of Athens, where St. Paul spoke. Today there are many areopagi, and very different ones: These are the vast sectors of contemporary civilization and culture, of politics and economics. The more the West is becoming estranged from its Christian roots, the more it is becoming missionary territory, taking the form of many different areopagi. (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 57)
The difference between the task of St Paul and the task of the evangelist in the modern areopagus is that the modern evangelist has the experience not only of St Paul but of 2000 years of other evangelists to work with. In the same encyclical, the Holy Father illustrates this,
[…] the whole of Christian history appears to us as a single river, into which many tributaries pour their waters. The year 2000 invites us to gather with renewed fidelity and ever deeper communion along the banks of this great river: the river of revelation, of Christianity and of the church, a river which flows through human history starting from the event which took place at Nazareth and then at Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. This is truly the “river” which with its “streams,” in the expression of the psalm, “make glad the city of God” (Ps 46.4). (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 25)
Editorial FAITH Magazine May-June 1997 by Tim Finigan
Vincent Miceli’s inspired title The God’s of Atheism summed up perfectly the problem for evangelisation of the early 1970s which was a period of mature decay in the Christian culture of the West. The spiritual emptiness and hunger left by the rejection of the Church was filled by the alternatives of pleasure, power, wealth and other substitute divinities.
Fr Roger Nesbitt recently referred to Soth East England as “the most secular corner of the planet”. In his encyclical Tertio Millennio Adveniente, Pope John Paul has outlined eloquently the climate which gives rise to this judgment
How can we remain silent, for example, about the religious indifference which causes many people today to live as if God did not exist or to be content with a vague religiosity, incapable of coming to grips with the question of truth and the requirement of consistency? To this must also be added the widespread loss of the transcendent sense of human life and confusion in the ethical sphere, even about the fundamental values of respect for life and the family. The sons and daughters of the church, too, need to examine themselves in this regard. To what extent have they been shaped by the climate of secularism and ethical relativism? And what responsibility do they bear, in view of the increasing lack of religion, for not having shown the true face of God, by having “failed in their religious, moral or social life”? (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 36)
Sadly, from the late 1960s onwards, the response of the Church in many places was not so much to vindicate anew the claims of Christ but to attempt to tone down its message in order to make it more palatable to such tastes. The inevitable results are still very much with us as our mass attendance figures continue in freefall. The defeatist policy “planning for fewer priests” is possibly even premature since there are now so few practising Catholics to minister to that in some areas there is even a surplus of clergy.
Outside the Church there is an almost total lack of information about the basis of her teaching. A few issues are known in broad terms—the Church is against contraception and women priests, good at prayers and counselling—but almost nothing is known of the reasons for her teaching. Within the Church we can see the factors which make this ignorance difficult to overcome. We are now well into the second generation of parents affected by what was known as the “New Catechetics” in the 1970s. Among the parents there is a lot of residual faith and goodwill but very little knowledge of even the basics. The exceptions have often come about through good Catholic teachers either ignoring official policy or resolutely fighting against it.
There has been no substantial change of policy in more recent catechetical material. The disastrous Corpus Christi College line which we so resolutely opposed in the early 1970s has given birth to the Our Faith Story and National Project approach which is official policy in most dioceses today. In the rumoured replacement for Weaving the Web, there needs to be a fundamental rethink in terms of basic philosophy. It is no good pretending that nothing was really wrong and inserting quotes from the Catechism into a scheme that adopts the same approach. We do not ask for public renunciation and a communist show trial but we do need a genuine reform.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church of course provides us with a magnificent basis on which to build such a reform. As a providential gift to the Church in a time of great need, it places the second Vatican Council clearly in its context. Pope John Paul sumnmed this up in his encyclical Tertio Millennio Adveniente
The Second Vatican Council is often considered as the beginning of a new era in the life of the church. This is true, but at the same time it is difficult to overlook the fact that the council drew much from the experiences and reflections of the immediate past, especially from the intellectual legacy left by Pius XII. In the history of the church, the “old” and the “new” are always closely interwoven. The “new” grows out of the “old,” and the “old” finds a fuller expression in the “new.” (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 17)
Perhaps future generations will find it difficult to see this as anything other than blindingly obvious. For the moment, this continuity with the past is something we need to be reminded of, if only to counteract many years of indoctrination that everything before 1965 must be treated with suspicion.
With the tremendous resource of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we have, at last, the means to inform every educated person on the basic teaching of the Catholic Church. Often, little else is needed. The Catholic faith has been so comprehensively caricatured and trivialised by the media that when it is presented in the rational and clear manner of the Catechism, it is not uncommon for people to question whether this is really the teaching of the Church or some cosmetic counterfeit. If it can be allowed to dawn on an interested enquirer that this is indeed an authentic expression of the legacy of the Church from its dawn to the present day, developing organically without any substantial change, it is an awesome phenomenon. To be a part of it can suddenly seem imperative. Such is the experience of many converts to the faith many of whom then turn with a sense of anger and ask why they were never allowed to know this before.
Earlier, the Pope’s description of secular climate was quoted. He continued in the same section to analyse the reason for the lack of response from the Church:
It cannot be denied that for many Christians the spiritual life is passing through a time of uncertainty which affects not only their moral life but also their life of prayer and the theological correctness of their faith. Faith, already put to the test by the challenges of our times, is sometimes disoriented by erroneous theological views, the spread of which is abetted by the crisis of obedience vis-a-vis the church’s magisterium. (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 36)
As with the description of secularism, many will recognise this crisis in the life of the Church. The crisis of obedience to the Church’s magisterium is itself seldom well understood. It is usually portrayed in terms of the valiant freedom fighter against the wizened monsignori of the Vatican. For the Catholic, of course, obedience to the magisterium of the Church is a much greater thing than a respect for “Vatican directives”. Obedience to the magisterium is obedience to Christ and a direct challenge to the magisterium is opposition to Christ. The idea of magisterial teaching can only make sense if it is teaching with divine authority.
Although there continue to be many elements of crisis in the life of the Church in the affluent west, there are hopeful signs as we near the millennium. A renewed sense of brotherhood and a willingness to work together on the part of many priests is a most heartening development in the Church at the level of the ordinary parish. We are not trotskyists and we do not need to smash in order to rebuild. It is indeed possible to recognise the mistakes of the past and to build on the goodwill and humility that is at the disposal of the Church, especially among those who work in the pastoral sphere.
What is necessary is a return to the roots of our culture and a new presentation of the Christian faith that is true to those roots. Again, the Holy Father puts his finger on the problem:
[…] as the encyclical Redemptoris Missio affirms, the modern world reflects the situation of the Areopagus of Athens, where St. Paul spoke. Today there are many areopagi, and very different ones: These are the vast sectors of contemporary civilization and culture, of politics and economics. The more the West is becoming estranged from its Christian roots, the more it is becoming missionary territory, taking the form of many different areopagi. (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 57)
The difference between the task of St Paul and the task of the evangelist in the modern areopagus is that the modern evangelist has the experience not only of St Paul but of 2000 years of other evangelists to work with. In the same encyclical, the Holy Father illustrates this,
[…] the whole of Christian history appears to us as a single river, into which many tributaries pour their waters. The year 2000 invites us to gather with renewed fidelity and ever deeper communion along the banks of this great river: the river of revelation, of Christianity and of the church, a river which flows through human history starting from the event which took place at Nazareth and then at Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. This is truly the “river” which with its “streams,” in the expression of the psalm, “make glad the city of God” (Ps 46.4). (Tertio Millennio Adveniente 25)