A Secular Age - and beyond

The Focolare Movement in Great Britain publishes a magazine 11 times a year, called New City. The name is shared with many editions in other languages published by the Focolare in different parts of the world. Following the charism of unity of the Focolare Movement, the magazine states its mission as follows:

New City works to promote mutual understanding and respect through dialogue. Together with our readers we want to discover how to "build bridges" in the different sectors of society and in personal life. We are convinced that dialogue, based on mutual love, is the only way to build a more united world which is based on universal values such as justice, equality, truth and peace.

The November 2023 issue can be viewed online here; and previous issues can be viewed here.

The November 2023 issue has two articles that address the question of how Christians should feel and act in a world that is recognised to be increasingly "secular" or "secularised". The articles of interest are the interview with Fr Patrick Gilger SJ starting on page 4 and the reflection by Robbie Young on pages 16-17. You will need to follow the link above and read these articles if you wish to understand my comments below.

Fr Patrick identifies three understandings of the idea of secularity: firstly, a political arrangement in which the Church is separate from the State; and secondly, a decline in religious belief and practice in the world around us. In a third understanding, however, Fr Patrick identifies secularity (the wording of the article at this point seems to have chosen this word rather than secularisation) as seeing in the world a plurality of world views and life styles, and therefore a kind of competitive space rather than one that sets out deliberately to target religious belief. The suggestion that follows is that Christians should see the process of secularisation in society as an opportunity for dialogue, as an opportunity to encounter potential collaborators rather than enemies, though they may be collaborators with whom we may never full agree. If, as Fr Patrick points out later in his interview, Jesus is still present in the world, this seeking of dialogue becomes a search to discover how He may be acting in places other than we might expect.

There is an echo of this thought in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, occuring in n.92. at the conclusion of the constitution: 

For our part, the desire for such dialogue, which can lead to truth through love alone, excludes no one, though an appropriate measure of prudence must undoubtedly be exercised. We include those who cultivate outstanding qualities of the human spirit, but do not yet acknowledge the Source of these qualities. We include those who oppress the Church and harass her in manifold ways. Since God the Father is the origin and purpose of all men, we are all called to be brothers. Therefore, if we have been summoned to the same destiny, human and divine, we can and we should work together without violence and deceit in order to build up the world in genuine peace.

 Robbie Young's survey is, I think, a prescient reflection on the background to our present day situation. I am particularly interested in what he describes as a "bonus" that our Western societies have taken on board, and that may provide that potential for dialogue:

For decades now Western societies have placed all their money on what was believed to be a knock-out combination of liberal democracies, free market economies, and science and technology, with a bonus thrown in that invididuals can choose their own values, moral codes and lifestyles. Perhaps it will be the bonus that will turn out to be the Trojan Horse. If selfishness, licentiousness, and consumeristic hedonism come to characterise the culture, how could it possibly survive?

 It is possible to be both over pessimistic and over optimistic when considering this path way of dialogue between Christians and wider society. The task can seem quite overwhelming if it is viewed in a wide perspective. But, as is the practice of the Focolare Movement, dialogue can be promoted in local and small scale contexts, among the people that you happen to know, with real chances of building unity.

A circle of flowers

Two posts on the death of Christopher Hitchens - Christopher Hitchens now knows there is a God, and Pray for Christopher Hitchens - prompted me to recall a story about Madeleine Delbrel. It is related on p.76 of Charles F Mann's biography Madeleine Delbrel: A Life Beyond Boundaries. The story comes from the first days of Madeleine's life in Ivry, a Communist suburb of Paris.

As part of her growing social involvement, Madeleine agreed to care for a cancer patient while his wife was at work. He was close to death, yet still reading l'Humanite, the French Communist newspaper, delivered by his good comrades. Sensing the man's hostility toward her as a Catholic, Madeleine engaged him on a personal level, talking about his favourite jams and jellied fruits. By the end of the afternoon, they had established a warm and jovial rapport.

The next day, Madeleine arrived  with flowers, chicken soup and pear jam. When the man did not respond to her greeting, she thought he was asleep only to discover moments later that he was dead. Recovering from her initial shock, Madeleine sent for the wife and summoned enough courage to prepare the corpse for burial. The wife arrived, her face flushed and her eyes brimming with tears. She was accompanied by a horde of Communist neighbours who became a captive audience when she turned to Madeleine and scolded her for arranging the flowers in the form of a cross on her husband's chest. Realizing her blunder, Madeleine sincerely apologized and carefully rearranged the flowers in a circular fashion.

Now, a Catholic should certainly pray for the repose of the soul of Christopher Hitchens, as they should pray for the repose of the souls of all those who have died. And it is not inappropriate to recall the hostility of Christopher Hitchens towards Catholic figures like Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II. The obituaries and commentaries on his death do to a degree continue the controversy that was Christopher Hitchens'  life, and Catholics are entitled to engage in their side of that controversy.

But, at the same time, I wonder whether or not charity asks for a certain discretion? For a prayer that is said quietly, but said nevertheless, and said in the form of flowers arranged in a circle rather than a cross.

UPDATE: An interesting comment by the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture is reported here.

Humanists opt to call it a day

... is the headline (on page 21) in one of our local newspapers this weekend. It refers to the forthcoming demise of Humanists in Havering, the local branch of the British Humanist Association.

Locally, numbers have dwindled from more than 50 during the group's hedyday in the middle of the last century to around 15 current regular members, outgoing chairman Dr Katie Frith, 86, revealed.... "We have monthly meetings, which are very well attended by our faithful few, but visitors must look around at us and they just don't come back". "We won't fade away completely, but can't go on as we are", add Dr Frith, who has been a member since 1966....Members, on average, are in their mid-70's and the group has lost a number of leading lights in recent years...The Humanists in Havering will hold an extraordinary general meeting in September, at which it is expected members will vote to amalgamate with the Chelmsford based Humanists in Essex. ... Publicity manager, Christine Seymour, 67, said: "...There are plenty of young humanists out there, but I think most of us feel the battle is won."

It looks as if, in Havering at least, atheism is dying out. But, before we rejoice, it might be worth reflecting on what is replacing it. The "faithful few" are of a generation which thought about issues of religious faith or atheism. People today are probably more typically indifferent to such questions, and are secularist in outlook rather than humanist. I do not go along with the suggestion that there are "plenty of young humanists out there". If anything, young people are today growing up in an environment where religious belief enjoys a bigger impact in the public sphere - for good and for evil - than in the recent past. So "most of us feel the battle is won" is, to say the least, somewhat over-optimistic an observation.

Cardinal Murphy O'Connor: Faith in Britain today (2)

As previously indicated, here is the further post on Cardinal Murphy O'Connor's lecture. An interesting insight that Cardinal Murphy O'Connor's lecture suggests is that the key dialogue that is needed in our society is less a dialogue between the different religions but rather more a dialogue between religious belief and atheism.

In some ways it is a bit nit-picking to select short quotations from the lecture for comment - my apologies to the Cardinal for that; but the need to present a coherent and consistent understanding of what reason is, what faith is and, then, how the two relate to each other, appears to me vital to achieving a proper dialogue with atheism.

"Our faith is not founded on the conclusions of reason, but it is grounded in the Logos, the expressive Word that comes from God, and it is compatible with reasoned thought"

One might want to add to this that "the conclusions of reason" might provide some grounding for our faith, since reason is going to be very much to the fore in a dialogue with atheism, but Cardinal Murphy O'Connor is correct in asserting a decisive grounding in the revelation of God in the Word.

"We should remember that the proper response to God is that of faith, not absolute certainty".

The opposing of faith and certainty in this sentence is, I think, unfortunate; and the following discussion of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine reflects the unfortunate nature of the sentence. First of all, we need to be clear that faith can give a confident and certain knowledge of the truth contained in revelation - but some will read this sentence as a denial of that. That there is something more to be learnt about God, both intellectually and in terms of our lived communion with him, may be the intention of the "not absolute certainty" and be what Aquinas calls "imperfect knowledge", but that is not the same as questioning the confidence that we can have in the knowledge achieved through faith.

In his interview on Radio 4's Today programme, Cardinal Murphy O'Connor said:

"..reason of itself cannot prove the existence of God .."

and

" .. reason is not enough .."

The defined teaching of the Church is that we can come to a confident knowledge of God through the use of reason in studying the world around us. What faith, that is, the knowledge achieved through God's self-revelation, provides is another, complementary way in which this knowledge of God's existence can be known. In their different circumstances, people may in practice rely on one way of knowing more than they do on the other for their knowledge of God's existence, or they may not get there at all. But I think, in dialogue with atheism, religious believers are going to want to insist on the ability of reason to come to knowledge of God's existence.

"If Christians really believed in the mystery of God, we would realise that proper talk about God is always difficult, always tentative ... A God who can be spoken about comfortably and clearly by human beings cannot be the true God."

But the reference to God as mystery does not mean that what we say about God should not be said, or that we cannot have confidence in what we say about Him. It recognises that the revealed mystery of God is something to be lived as well as spoken about and known. The difficulty and tentativeness can refer to the what-is-still-to-be-learnt in our intellectual lives, but we need to be careful that it does not make a statement that we cannot really know about God at all.

The last part of this post is slightly adapted from the comment I sent earlier today to the "Debate" forum for this lecture on the Westminster diocesan website.

Reason can come to know things about the physical world around us (the physical sciences), about the human person and his presence in the world (the social sciences) etc. It can address questions about things that are not material - human motivations and consciousness. And from this, it can also address questions about the meaning of life, the universe and everything - and, whilst there is always more to be learnt or discovered, there is a possibility for confidence in this knowledge. And one can equally apply this reason to the phenomena of religion - it being profoundly irrational to deny the existence of religion as a phenomenon. An honesty in this study will not, in my view, permit the characterisation of religious belief as simply personal imaginings, its OK if you need it, invention of the early Church, etc. It is also necessary to understand what the term faith means - and again this has not been fully developed in the Cardinal's lecture. Faith is a knowledge that can be confident of what it knows in the same way that reason can be confident of what it knows, though the source of that knowledge is different. Yes, we can grow into greater knowledge, both reasoned and faith-based knowledge, but that is not the same as denying the confidence that we can have in both.

And, here I would want to endorse Cardinal Murphy O'Connor's call for greater dialogue between believers and non-believers. Let's undertake that through the hard work of applying our reason in all its many different approaches (the physical and social sciences) to the questions of atheism and religious belief. Religious believers are of the view that what we believe and teach can stand up to this challenge of reason; can the atheist position stand up to the same challenge?

As they say these days ... "bring it on".