Cultural Renewal and Catholic Realism
Editorial FAITH Magazine November-December 2001
Defining ‘culture’
For many people the word 'culture' evokes the more sophisticated forms of public entertainment - the opera, the South Bank, the Booker Prize for literature, and so on. Actually it applies to the whole matrix of ideas and their corresponding values, which permeate a society, and are expressed at all social levels and in all the major structures and activities of the human community. The Oxford English Dictionary therefore defines 'culture' in this way:
Thoughts from the English Church
Cardinal Murphy O'Connor's clarion call for recognition that Christianity in our country is almost "vanquished" as a "background" to the lives of people in our "culture" was in some ways a natural progression from some of his other utterances in his first year in office. He has often called for a new degree of courage from committed Catholics in challenging secular values, in which he has led the way himself. Archbishop Nichols of Birmingham has also remarked that,
A second spring?
Closer to the heart of the FAITH movement are the editorial words of another new publishing venture: "Second Spring". It bears the subtitle "A Journal of Faith and Culture" since it is the fruit of the energetic Oxford 'Centre' of the same name. It's editorial line is committed to overcoming the "the gap between faith and culture (which) Paul VI called the 'drama of our times'" through the integral Catholic Faith. The problem though, the editorial continues,
Readers of our own 30 year old magazine will not be surprised to know that we warmly welcome these signs of renewed confidence in the integral Catholic Faith as the key to reversing secularism. Those who have participated in FAITH conferences will know that we share the desire, expressed by all three of the above periodicals, to reflect on the interface of Catholicism not only with science and philosophy, but also with the social and the moral dimensions of humanity, as well as art, history and literature. Nor will they be surprised to know that we have one key contribution to make to this on-going reflection. To imbue all these fields of modern culture with the Catholic idea one needs to express Catholicism clearly in a manner which is coherent with what is good and true in modern culture and corrective of what is false. This has always been the Catholic genius, from St Paul onwards. Hence our own subtitle "Promoting a New Synthesis of Faith and Reason." The factors which have contributed to modern cultural decline, and the corresponding possibility of renewal, are all linked to the fall and rise of a culturally coherent articulation of the truths of our faith. Our diagnosis must therefore be deep and humble and our prescription synthetic and bold. Christopher Dawson highlighted this 'drama of our times' when he wrote, concerning the French Revolution: .... we have not paid enough attention to the intellectual revolution that had already taken place before there was any question of a political one. Yet it is this intellectual revolution that is responsible for the secularization of western culture. (Christopher Dawson, The gods of Revolution, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972, p14) Cardinal Newman touched on the heart of the matter in his introduction to The Development of Christian Doctrine, one and a half centuries ago. He stated that:
The diagnosis of the errors of secularism, and hence the prognosis for its reversal, must be linked to the issue of valid knowledge and true communication, thus ultimately to the degree of trust in the objectivity of truth and of language. It is intrinsically related to the decline (and hence the possible renewal) of Catholic realism - that school of thought which justifies our knowledge of things as they are in themselves and can therefore accurately communicate this knowledge through language. Aquinas's great achievement was to establish a realist metaphysic (a realist articulation of things as they are in themselves) for his time and culture. The challenge has now arisen to do the same again in our own scientific era and sceptical culture.
Our secularist culture has grown up around the presumption that you cannot say anything true about the fundamental reason for anything. Modern science has uncovered much about the "what" and the "how" of our material universe, but the fashionable philosophies of science forbid or exclude the possibility of asking "why?" The common, uncritical assumption is that we can have no certainty about anything that lies beyond the realm of our physical senses, therefore no knowledge of 'God'. Needless to say this has been fatal for 'metaphysics' but it has also pulled the carpet from under Christianity as a whole in the popular mind.
The social impact of philosophy
Not only is Christianity based on the revelation of truth from God, but it also relies on the objective reference of linguistic statements as its truth is handed on generation to generation, in Creed, Council and even upon our mother's knee. When Immanuel Kant 'killed' objective knowledge and metaphysics, Nietzsche's pronouncement that 'God is dead' became inevitable. The 'post-modern' culture of secular scepticism and moral relativism is simply the logical outcome of the further 'ethnic cleansing' of all objective truth from the popular mind. To the extent that this mindset has permeated our culture so has Christianity been "vanquished" as a dominant social voice and vital cultural force in our world. The philosophical denial of meaningful relationship and objective order in the world has led to rampant individualism in society and at the same time (and ironically) is giving rise to an assessment of the identity and worth of the individual which is purely reductionist and materialist - we are just bodies to be cloned and dispatched according to social utility.
To the same extent, and for the same fundamental reasons, those meaningful connections (truths) which are the very stuff of language are increasingly perceived as purely subjective, just inventions or preferences of individual minds. In such a fragmented world-view the God who comes in human form and talks in human language cannot get a look in. It is difficult to proclaim the 'fullness of Truth' to a culture that has lost its basic faith in truth and meaning at all.
Inadequate responses
We cannot renew such a shattered culture without re-establishing the ordered meaningfulness of our world (through a new metaphysics) and the ability of our language to capture it (realism). Arousing a new interest in the great apologists of the first half of the twentieth century, (like G.K. Chesterton for example) and offering Catholic principles for discerning what is good and bad in the arts, humanities and politics is undoubtedly valuable and can contribute to the work of evangelization. But you cannot truly renew a relativist culture without first making it realist. A new evangelization and a new apologetic must be based on a thoroughgoing new synthesis of faith and reason.
Reassertion of orthodoxy is not enough. And even if it were true to say that a particular rite of Mass "protected the intellectual health of the Church" (although we would not be so sure about this, the seeds of crisis were present long before the liturgical reform) we would still need an intellectual renewal to treat an intellectual sickness. Dawson indeed goes on to say that the
A new unified vision
John Paul II in his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio makes clear the essential role of the rebirth of realism through the development of a bold new metaphysics, in renewing our cultural milieu. We must search for
A new synthesis for a new catechesis
For many years the FAITH movement has run conferences built around a series of talks on some or other of the above scriptural themes. We present a renewed Christocentric vision of creation, which acts like a key to the convincing coherence of the whole Catholic faith. Whilst we do not go into philosophical detail at catechetical and apologetic level, it is nonetheless important that our whole vision is suffused by a new realist and scientific metaphysic.The synthesis on offer reconnects the objectivity of language with the real world uncovered by modern science. It can therefore also re-synthesise a true phenomenology of human consciousness and the Judaeo-Christian revelation concerning the contingency of the cosmos and its fulfilment in Jesus Christ.At root our work operates on the principle that love follows knowledge. Put simply you cannot love what you do not know. So a catechesis of love alone is not enough. Without a convincing vision of truth you cannot convert and re-Christianize a whole culture. The Word was made flesh before the Spirit of Love was sent, so there can be no authentic practice of love without an authentic word of truth to inform it.The crisis of our culture, then, is not so much that our love has grown cold as that our minds have grown dark. The light of Christ must shine out in our good works it is true, but it must first illuminate our minds with a new and radiant vision of the Truth if it is to give fire to our words and conviction to our message.There is no doubt that our society now stands at a crossroads, this is a time of literal crisis. At such time it becomes clear that the Church must indeed talk of cultural and not merely of local re-evangelization. But for this we need a whole new vision of Christ and the world. Appeals to the heart of the modern world are falling on deaf ears, not because the spirit is unwilling but because the mind is weak.
Our civilisation is lost in mists of philosophical and cultural 'pluralism', which really stands for agnosticism and moral chaos. The need for a new synthesis is not an academic issue, the future of the Church in the West depends on it, our debased secular culture is crying out for it. Surely we must expect God to prompt it and all men and women of good will to seek it. For as the inspired proverb puts it "where there is no vision the people perish" (Proverbs 29, 18).
Editorial FAITH Magazine November-December 2001
Defining ‘culture’
For many people the word 'culture' evokes the more sophisticated forms of public entertainment - the opera, the South Bank, the Booker Prize for literature, and so on. Actually it applies to the whole matrix of ideas and their corresponding values, which permeate a society, and are expressed at all social levels and in all the major structures and activities of the human community. The Oxford English Dictionary therefore defines 'culture' in this way:
"a particular type of intellectual development or civilisation."The current war between the West and the forces of "terrorism" has caused a wave of reflection on the meaning of 'culture'. In some quarters the conflict is being portrayed as a 'culture war', the eruption of long standing tensions between the mutually exclusive proselytising of Western relativist secularism and extreme Islamic militancy. One more positive aspect of this crisis is that the words "truth" and "falsehood" are back in the air. Relativism itself is being challenged as we confront our cultural boundaries. It is noteworthy that this has coincided with a renewed confidence within the Catholic Church in Britain in the relevance of the light of Christ in his Church for saving our world and renewing our culture.
Thoughts from the English Church
Cardinal Murphy O'Connor's clarion call for recognition that Christianity in our country is almost "vanquished" as a "background" to the lives of people in our "culture" was in some ways a natural progression from some of his other utterances in his first year in office. He has often called for a new degree of courage from committed Catholics in challenging secular values, in which he has led the way himself. Archbishop Nichols of Birmingham has also remarked that,
we live in a time when Faith is given no space, no place in the public forum … our enlightenment culture where science and reason has dominated has made it difficult for us to speak of the things of God in a manner that resonates in the mind of the hearer, but there are signs that this mindset is beginning to change particularly among the young. … They are even, I saw in Rome at the World Youth Day, open to the teaching of the Church, that unfolding of the message of Christ in a clear and authoritative manner. … More and more I sense we will have to be explicit about the personal faith foundations on which we live, the principles by which we try to act, the dogmas, or "saving truths", to which we hold… We will have to show their reasonableness, arguing carefully from premises accessible to the secular mind, yet never failing to disclose the transcendental origins of the truth to which we seek to give ourselves. (Vincent Nichols, Seeking the Presence of God, Good News newsletter, Catholic Charismatic Renewal, May/June 2000)The recognition of this 'culture-clash' can now be heard in the statements and policies of diocesan officers at quite a few levels in a number of dioceses. This same awareness seems also to have inspired a fresh burst of English language Catholic periodicals this year. The Latin Mass magazine has felt compelled to change its subtitle from "Chronicle of a Catholic Reform" to "A Journal of Catholic Culture", arguing that that it was "The ancient Mass (which) protected the intellectual health of the church for at least fifteen centuries." The newly launched St Austin Review has chosen the subtitle "Reclaiming Culture" and hopes to be a "a servant of … the forces of religious orthodoxy" by wielding "the double edged sword of orthodoxy and tradition … in a sea of nihilism."
A second spring?
Closer to the heart of the FAITH movement are the editorial words of another new publishing venture: "Second Spring". It bears the subtitle "A Journal of Faith and Culture" since it is the fruit of the energetic Oxford 'Centre' of the same name. It's editorial line is committed to overcoming the "the gap between faith and culture (which) Paul VI called the 'drama of our times'" through the integral Catholic Faith. The problem though, the editorial continues,
An intellectual problem
cannot be addressed by an attempt simply to recover a world that has been lost, a mythical golden age set back in the 1950's, the 1870's or the Middle Ages. Yes we need to restore and retrieve much that has been lost or forgotten in the rush to be 'modern' - now that Modernism itself has become passé. But we must do it within a new cultural moment…. In particular we believe that the Second Vatican Council, for all the disasters associated with its aftermath, was an act of the Holy Spirit that made possible a new springtime of the faith in the twenty-first century. Its fruits are only now beginning to manifest.
Readers of our own 30 year old magazine will not be surprised to know that we warmly welcome these signs of renewed confidence in the integral Catholic Faith as the key to reversing secularism. Those who have participated in FAITH conferences will know that we share the desire, expressed by all three of the above periodicals, to reflect on the interface of Catholicism not only with science and philosophy, but also with the social and the moral dimensions of humanity, as well as art, history and literature. Nor will they be surprised to know that we have one key contribution to make to this on-going reflection. To imbue all these fields of modern culture with the Catholic idea one needs to express Catholicism clearly in a manner which is coherent with what is good and true in modern culture and corrective of what is false. This has always been the Catholic genius, from St Paul onwards. Hence our own subtitle "Promoting a New Synthesis of Faith and Reason." The factors which have contributed to modern cultural decline, and the corresponding possibility of renewal, are all linked to the fall and rise of a culturally coherent articulation of the truths of our faith. Our diagnosis must therefore be deep and humble and our prescription synthetic and bold. Christopher Dawson highlighted this 'drama of our times' when he wrote, concerning the French Revolution: .... we have not paid enough attention to the intellectual revolution that had already taken place before there was any question of a political one. Yet it is this intellectual revolution that is responsible for the secularization of western culture. (Christopher Dawson, The gods of Revolution, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1972, p14) Cardinal Newman touched on the heart of the matter in his introduction to The Development of Christian Doctrine, one and a half centuries ago. He stated that:
Not only have the relative situations of controversies and theologies altered, infidelity itself is in a different - I am obliged to say in a more hopeful position - as regards Christianity. The facts of revealed religion though in their substance unaltered, present a less compact and orderly front to the attacks of its enemies now than formerly …. the assailants of dogmatic truth have got the start of its adherents of whatever Creed: philosophy is completing what criticism (the study of the validity of knowledge - Ed) has begun: and apprehensions are not unreasonably excited lest we should have a new world to conquer before we have weapons for the warfare. (John Henry Newman, The Development of Christian Doctrine, Sheed and Ward, 1960, p 22)A realist solution
The diagnosis of the errors of secularism, and hence the prognosis for its reversal, must be linked to the issue of valid knowledge and true communication, thus ultimately to the degree of trust in the objectivity of truth and of language. It is intrinsically related to the decline (and hence the possible renewal) of Catholic realism - that school of thought which justifies our knowledge of things as they are in themselves and can therefore accurately communicate this knowledge through language. Aquinas's great achievement was to establish a realist metaphysic (a realist articulation of things as they are in themselves) for his time and culture. The challenge has now arisen to do the same again in our own scientific era and sceptical culture.
Our secularist culture has grown up around the presumption that you cannot say anything true about the fundamental reason for anything. Modern science has uncovered much about the "what" and the "how" of our material universe, but the fashionable philosophies of science forbid or exclude the possibility of asking "why?" The common, uncritical assumption is that we can have no certainty about anything that lies beyond the realm of our physical senses, therefore no knowledge of 'God'. Needless to say this has been fatal for 'metaphysics' but it has also pulled the carpet from under Christianity as a whole in the popular mind.
The social impact of philosophy
Not only is Christianity based on the revelation of truth from God, but it also relies on the objective reference of linguistic statements as its truth is handed on generation to generation, in Creed, Council and even upon our mother's knee. When Immanuel Kant 'killed' objective knowledge and metaphysics, Nietzsche's pronouncement that 'God is dead' became inevitable. The 'post-modern' culture of secular scepticism and moral relativism is simply the logical outcome of the further 'ethnic cleansing' of all objective truth from the popular mind. To the extent that this mindset has permeated our culture so has Christianity been "vanquished" as a dominant social voice and vital cultural force in our world. The philosophical denial of meaningful relationship and objective order in the world has led to rampant individualism in society and at the same time (and ironically) is giving rise to an assessment of the identity and worth of the individual which is purely reductionist and materialist - we are just bodies to be cloned and dispatched according to social utility.
To the same extent, and for the same fundamental reasons, those meaningful connections (truths) which are the very stuff of language are increasingly perceived as purely subjective, just inventions or preferences of individual minds. In such a fragmented world-view the God who comes in human form and talks in human language cannot get a look in. It is difficult to proclaim the 'fullness of Truth' to a culture that has lost its basic faith in truth and meaning at all.
Inadequate responses
We cannot renew such a shattered culture without re-establishing the ordered meaningfulness of our world (through a new metaphysics) and the ability of our language to capture it (realism). Arousing a new interest in the great apologists of the first half of the twentieth century, (like G.K. Chesterton for example) and offering Catholic principles for discerning what is good and bad in the arts, humanities and politics is undoubtedly valuable and can contribute to the work of evangelization. But you cannot truly renew a relativist culture without first making it realist. A new evangelization and a new apologetic must be based on a thoroughgoing new synthesis of faith and reason.
Reassertion of orthodoxy is not enough. And even if it were true to say that a particular rite of Mass "protected the intellectual health of the Church" (although we would not be so sure about this, the seeds of crisis were present long before the liturgical reform) we would still need an intellectual renewal to treat an intellectual sickness. Dawson indeed goes on to say that the
Wholesale rejection of the intellectual achievements of the post-French Revolution scientists and humanists will not do. The 1960's Second Vatican Council aimed "to speak to all men in order to unfold the mystery that is man and co-operate in facing the main problems of our world today"(Gaudium et Spes 10). The Council fathers tell us that
Intellectual… secularization of (our) culture … owed its dynamism to the resistance of a religious minority and its diffusion to the ill-judged and unjust, though sincere, action of religious orthodoxy. It is indeed the supreme example in history of the way in which religious persecution and repression defeats its own object and serves the cause it is attempting to destroy (Dawson, op.cit p15).
In wonder at their own discoveries and their own might, men are today troubled and perplexed about current trends in the world, about their place and their role in the universe, about the meaning of individual and collective endeavour, and finally about the destiny and nature of men. And so the Council … (intends) to enter into dialogue … and clarify these problems in the light of the Gospel (Gaudium et Spes, 3).In short the Council encourages us to do for our culture what Aquinas did for the world view of his times.
A new unified vision
John Paul II in his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio makes clear the essential role of the rebirth of realism through the development of a bold new metaphysics, in renewing our cultural milieu. We must search for
the ultimate framework of the unity of human knowledge and action, leading them to converge towards a final goal and meaning. … verify(ing) the human capacity …. to come to a knowledge which can reach objective truth … a philosophy of genuinely metaphysical range, capable, that is, of transcending empirical data in order to attain something absolute, ultimate and foundational in its search for truth … If I insist so strongly on the metaphysical element, it is because I am convinced that it is the path to be taken in order to move beyond the crisis pervading large sectors of philosophy at the moment, and thus to correct certain mistaken modes of behaviour now widespread in our society. … Hence we face a great challenge at the end of this millennium to move from phenomenon to foundation, a step as necessary as it is urgent. The importance of metaphysics becomes still more evident if we consider current developments in hermeneutics and the analysis of language.… Faith clearly presupposes that human language is capable of expressing divine and transcendent reality.This "urgent" task will involve a "willingness to run risks" in "forg(ing) new paths" which must however be consistent with the following seven aspects of the scriptural vision of truth: ‘God alone is the absolute … Man (is) in the image of God, … the immortality of the human soul ... the essential dependence upon God of every creature … evil stems not from any material deficiency, but … (from) the disordered exercise of human freedom. … Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God … is the perfect realisation of human existence…. the rejection of all forms of relativism, materialism and pantheism’.
A new synthesis for a new catechesis
For many years the FAITH movement has run conferences built around a series of talks on some or other of the above scriptural themes. We present a renewed Christocentric vision of creation, which acts like a key to the convincing coherence of the whole Catholic faith. Whilst we do not go into philosophical detail at catechetical and apologetic level, it is nonetheless important that our whole vision is suffused by a new realist and scientific metaphysic.The synthesis on offer reconnects the objectivity of language with the real world uncovered by modern science. It can therefore also re-synthesise a true phenomenology of human consciousness and the Judaeo-Christian revelation concerning the contingency of the cosmos and its fulfilment in Jesus Christ.At root our work operates on the principle that love follows knowledge. Put simply you cannot love what you do not know. So a catechesis of love alone is not enough. Without a convincing vision of truth you cannot convert and re-Christianize a whole culture. The Word was made flesh before the Spirit of Love was sent, so there can be no authentic practice of love without an authentic word of truth to inform it.The crisis of our culture, then, is not so much that our love has grown cold as that our minds have grown dark. The light of Christ must shine out in our good works it is true, but it must first illuminate our minds with a new and radiant vision of the Truth if it is to give fire to our words and conviction to our message.There is no doubt that our society now stands at a crossroads, this is a time of literal crisis. At such time it becomes clear that the Church must indeed talk of cultural and not merely of local re-evangelization. But for this we need a whole new vision of Christ and the world. Appeals to the heart of the modern world are falling on deaf ears, not because the spirit is unwilling but because the mind is weak.
Our civilisation is lost in mists of philosophical and cultural 'pluralism', which really stands for agnosticism and moral chaos. The need for a new synthesis is not an academic issue, the future of the Church in the West depends on it, our debased secular culture is crying out for it. Surely we must expect God to prompt it and all men and women of good will to seek it. For as the inspired proverb puts it "where there is no vision the people perish" (Proverbs 29, 18).