The paradox of the West
The relationship of
the Christian faith with the West, but more specifically the Catholic
faith, is essential in nature. By that I do not intend to argue that
there is a sort of identity between the West and Christianity, or that
Christianity is a category of the western mentality, or that
Christianity can be such only within the West in a geographical,
historical or cultural sense. Such a banal pretence could be all too
easily rebutted in an equally banal way by remarking that Christianity
saw the light of day in the eastern Mediterranean and has spread
throughout the world. In other words, the ‘western’ relationship was not
a contingency in the history of Christianity. Emerging in the
relationship with the West have been characteristics Christianity cannot
separate itself from without ceasing to exist, but from which it has
historically taken its distance precisely in the West. Thus issuing
forth is the problematic and paradoxical character of the West. On one
hand, Christianity’s encounter with the West was “providential”[1],
helped mould and shape western civilization, and in certain periods of
history – especially in the XII and XIII centuries – projected a
Christian civilization[2]
with particularly creative expressions. On the other hand, however,
developing in the West has been a process of secularisation that
progressively tends to exhaust Christianity in its ability to ‘produce’
civilization. Developing for the first time only in the western world
has been “a culture that constitutes the absolutely most radical
contradiction not only of Christianity, but of the religious and moral
traditions of society” [3].
Hence the profound ambiguity of the category of “west” as regards
Christianity itself. The “resilience” and the resistance” of
Christianity are faced with a decisive ‘test bench’ in the West.
Catholic dogma and the West
Often
given is a rather reductive interpretation of Catholicism’s impact on
western civilization in the sense of being looked upon as influence and
nothing more. That is tantamount to saying that Catholicism influenced
western civilization with its works charity, art, literature, religion
driven social networks, the coronation of kings and the like. All this
is true, but Catholicism’s profound relationship with the west concerns
dogmas and is the expression of the historicity of dogmas. This
expression – historicity of dogmas – does not mean dogmas evolve
historically in a manner parallel with self-awareness believers have of
them. This would be the modernist vision of the issue. What the
expression actually means is that a dogma has an historical and real
content, and may not be relegated to the realm of myth. Dogmas nourish
the Church and the Church is the Body of Christ in history, a Body
remaining for eternity[4].
Between dogma and Body there is an indivisible unity, such that a dogma
is present not only in a believer’s conscience, but by its very nature
becomes history, and therefore civilization. This is the realism of the
Catholic faith.
The Church has moulded western Christian
civilization with its dogmas defined in its dogmatic Councils. Nowadays
there is a widespread underrating of doctrine in the life of the Church
and an emphasis on pastoral praxis, which runs the risk of thrusting
this important aspect into the background. I’d like to offer two
examples in this regard. The first of them has to do with Gnosis. The
condemnation of Arianism and the definition of the human and divine
nature of Jesus contradicted Gnosis, which was an expression of Hellenic
rationalism. This entailed a lengthy process, which involved both
Councils and the work of the great Fathers and Doctors of the Church.
This ‘match’ has yet to be won since alongside the Gnosis of the early
centuries of Christianity there is an “eternal Gnosis”, but the battle
of Christian dogma against Gnosis preserved human civilization from the
catastrophes of Catharism, the simultaneous refusal and exaltation of
matter, the destruction of matrimony and the family, and the refusal of
political authority. It produced fruits of civilization in the form of
the just consideration of evil and suffering, and defended against
nihilism. The defence of the Old Testament against the Gnostic onslaught
made it possible to preserve the positive vision of creation and the
historical social dimension of the Christian faith. The baptism of
children, prayers for the dead, priestly celibacy and the worship of
images: what benefits brought by these elements to western civilization,
and all of them would have been lost forever by a possible prevalence
of Gnosis. What damage would have been caused by pauperism, pacifism,
Gnostic-type radical purism if they had been able to spread without
restraint! When commenting on the battle of Muret on 13 September 1213,
when Simone de Montfort, after having attended Mass celebrated by St.
Dominic, led 1,000 men in a rout of the Aragonese army supporting the
Albigensians with 40,000 men, Jean Guitton said: “Muret is one of those
decisive battles where the destiny of a civilization was decided.
Strangely enough, most historians overlook this fact”[5].
The
second example concerns Pious IX and the proclamation of the dogma of
the Immaculate Conception of Jesus. The definition of this dogma issued
forth from a theological reading of the events of the liberal
revolution. According to Pious IX all the contemporary errors stemmed
from the negation of original sin, and hence the irreconcilability
between God and sin. The aim of life had to be the progress of man and
the world; modern man had to become autonomous and self-sufficient,
liberating himself from the tutelage of the Church; religion was only
useful for purposes of civil progress and had to be subordinate to it.
Once original sin was denied, however, there was no place for Christ,
the Church and for grace.
In the face of such a vision of things
Pious IX wanted to reiterate the irreconcilability between God and the
sin of the world, as well as the fact that the ultimate aim of the world
and history is not the celebration of human progress, but the glory of
God. And he did this by proclaiming the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception of Mary, “glorious victor over heresies”.
The violent
events Pious IX had to witness were part of a plan to emancipate the
natural order from the supernatural order. He was of the opinion that it
was not possible to come to terms with this plan, that it could not be
“Catholicised”. Hence the genesis of the Encyclical Letter Quanta cura and the Sillabo,
which are not to be separated from the profound theological
significance of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception, but, together with Vatican Council I, seen as Pious IX’s
response to modern sin. Not by chance was 8 December an important date
for all of them: the proclamation of the dogma on that date in 1854, the
Quanta cura and the Sillabo in 1864, and the opening of Vatican Council I in 1869[6].
The
construction of western civilization took place with dogmas. Dogma was
the principle wellspring for countering the apostasy of the West from
Christianity. And this because that apostasy had also become dogmatic.
The secularisation of the West
I
intentionally took an example from the early centuries of Christianity
and a second one from modernity. Between them there is the construction
of a Christian civilization and then a progressive parting from it
through ever more accentuated secularisation. Nonetheless, since many
are those who attribute this secularisation to Christianity itself,
things become a bit complicated. But let’s take it by steps.
Perhaps
less than well known may be the fact that the most enthusiastic
exaltation of the importance of the Catholic Church for western
civilization is contained in the work, which, more so than any other,
theorized a rigorous and complete secularisation of that selfsame
civilization, I am referring to Auguste Comte’s The Course in Positive Philosophy. Karl Löwith, in his rightly famous book “Meaning in History. The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History, cites Comte’s laudatory words regarding Catholicism[7]
and argues that Comte held the Catholic system in high esteem
especially as regards the separation of spiritual power from temporal
power. That’s what we could call laicity. Regarding Protestantism, on
the other hand, Comte thought it had favoured “the emancipation of
temporal power and the subordination of spiritual power to national
interests”[8].
Catholicism had founded an order, while Protestantism “had laid the
foundations for the modern philosophical revolution, proclaiming the
right of each individual to free enquiry in all fields”[9].
Comte was of the opinion that “the degeneration of the European system
has but one cause, that being the political degradation of spiritual
power”, and Karl Löwith comments: “If we think each immature spirit was
left to its own decisions in the most important matters, there is reason
for being surprised that morality did not decline completely”[10]. Back during his times it had yet to decline completely.
The
work by Karl Löwith I have cited here explains in a convincing manner
how the modernist philosophy of history from Voltaire all the way to
Nietzsche consists in a progressive secularisation of Catholic dogmas. A
turning point of great interest in this secularisation process is to be
found in Comte. In Catholic dogma he saw the condition for the
existence of the social order according to a principle of distinction
between temporal and spiritual power based on the political role of
spiritual power. Nonetheless, he also saw that this equilibrium was by
then in disarray because in the wake of the “Protestant revolutions”,
the spiritual realm had abdicated its duties over the temporal order,
and the latter had emancipated itself from the spiritual realm. At one
and the same time, therefore, in Comte we have utmost praise for the
historical structure of Catholicism and its most radical negation
through the proposal of a equally absolute but radically lay position:
the positive spirit. According to Henri de Lubac, Comte’s positivism is
the most radical among the forms of contemporary atheistic humanism
insofar as it projects a life without God, with no more regrets or
illusions, and precisely for this reason has the same motivating force
of a religion able to construct an order. An order without God. In de
Lubac’s mind this project was and remains doomed to failure.[11]
This, however, is not the point of interest for us at the moment. What
interests us here is its “dogmatic” character, dogmatic in the sense of
being radically and absolutely anti-Catholic. Then again, if the
construction of the West had been due to Catholic dogmas, and if the
‘dismantling’ had taken place through the secularisation of Catholic
dogmas as so will demonstrated by Karl Löwith, the decisive turning
point had to take place when secularisation also assumed the character
of dogmatic absoluteness. This transpired with Comte, and we can
therefore say positivism is the dogma of modernity.
Regarding the presumed irreversibility of secularisation
I’d
like to return to Karl Löwith’s comment about the modern autonomy of
the temporal sphere from the spiritual one cited above: “If we think
each immature spirit was left to its own decisions in the most important
matters, there is reason for being surprised that morality did not
decline completely”. Coming to the surface here is a decisive point in
the issue at hand: does the emancipation of the temporal from the
spiritual, the replacement of Christian salvation with progress and
religion with science produce true autonomy capable of self-conservation
at its own level, or does it produce “decadence”? Löwith seems to align
with the latter position, and in the commentary under consideration
considers it miraculous that it proved possible to maintain an albeit
weak form of morality after this detachment.
Laicity understood
as the mutual distinction of the temporal sphere and the spiritual
sphere is an historical contribution of Christianity. Said distinction,
however, did not mean the separation and absolute autonomy of the
temporal sphere from the spiritual sphere, but took place within
Christian civilization, against a religious horizon. The Christian
sovereign acted autonomously, deploying political prudence, which means
exercising liberty within a system of truths whose ultimate guarantor
was the Church, which in Catholic dogmas conserved and protected the
patrimony of natural law as well.
As Karl Löwith remarks,
however, beginning with modernity is an ever more demanding
secularisation that renders the temporal sphere “capax sui”, autonomous
in an absolute sense, sufficient unto itself, and able to endow itself
with sense. Initially this ‘sense’ was borrowed from Christian dogmas
through a secularised interpretation of them, but then claimed more and
more as proper to secularisation itself, and this seems to have occurred
especially with Comte and positivism.
Published in 1968 was the
book “On the Theology of the World” written by Johann Baprist Metz, a
German theologian and disciple of Karl Rahner. Prior to this he had
written “Christian Anthropocentricity” in which he had argued that
secularisation had been caused by Christianity and was hence a Christian
fact to be accepted and lived as a fruit of Christianity, not to be
fought against as contrary to Christian faith. In this manner the
process of secularisation was interpreted as irreversible. In this later
book Metz sustained that in the wake of secularisation the world had by
now become completely worldly: “This the world where God is not
encountered” [12].
In is opinion, “for a long time – almost up to the beginning of the
last Council – the Church had followed this process only with
resentment, considered it almost exclusively as a downfall and a false
emancipation, and only quite slowly built up the courage to let the
world become ‘worldly’ in this sense, and hence consider this process
not just a fact contrary to the historical intentions of Christianity,
but rather a fact determined also by the most profound historical
impulses of this Christianity and its message” [13].
In
my opinion it is not correct to retain that positivist secularisation
stems from Christianity itself, nor can we accept the view that it is
the destiny of history. The irreversibility of secularisation is a
positivist dogma issuing forth from an ideological reading of history,
the Comtean reading of the law of the three stages, whereby humanity
would have evolved from the religious stage to the metaphysical stage to
the positive stage in an irreversible manner.
What are the
ultimate reasons why positivist secularisation cannot be seen as a
consequence of Christianity, or considered irreversible?
The
first reason is that positivism cannot help but project itself as a new
religion. We saw this above: secularisation becomes such when it does
not limit itself to being the immanent reformulation of Catholic dogmas,
detaches itself completely from Christian tradition, and proposes
itself as an absolute principle. For as long as Hegel, Marx, Pr0udhon,
and Voltaire, Condorcet, and Turgot before them had limited themselves
to replicating Christianity by proposing an immanent and secularised
version of it, the phases of secularisation could not lay a claim to
true self-autonomy or embody secularisation in the true sense. The
process remained linked to Christianity and continued to be reversible.
What other way to sever this umbilical cord with Christianity than to
propose secularisation as an absolute principle? Hence its religious
character; religious no longer in the sense of still being in debt to
the ‘old’ religion, but religious in the sense of religiously expressing
an absolute anti-religiosity.
This secularisation is not the fruit of Christianity.
The eclipse of nature and human nature in particular
As
already remarked above, the second reason has to do with the
possibility for the temporal level emancipated from the spiritual level
to maintain itself without succumbing to self-degeneration.
Having
acquired the feature of religious absoluteness, as we have just seen,
secularisation is destined to be opposed to the concept of nature, as
well as the concept of human nature. This is because otherwise
maintained would be a moral order that would constantly and implicitly
demand completion of some sort of religious form. If nature remains, so
does natural law, that being the order of nature that expresses a moral
norm. In its turn, the norm contained in natural law would keep ever
open the issue of its absolute and transcendent foundation, because in
itself the moral order needs an absolute foundation. Proposed anew,
therefore, would be the ‘old’ religion. For as long as Hugo Grotius
denies the transcendent foundation of natural law, but maintains natural
law, there is no irreversibility: the need for a transcendent
foundation can be argued and recovered. But if nature is denied, as does
positivism, this becomes definitively impossible and we have
irreversibility.
Naïve, therefore, is the perplexed astonishment
voiced by Karl Löwith. It is not possible for the natural level to
endure on its own once detached from the supernatural level. The stark
version of positivism projects itself as a “new beginning”, absolute and
religiously anti-religious. In order to do this it cannot help but deny
nature and natural law. Their decomposition and their abandonment may
well be progressive in time, but the principle of this process is
stipulated in its absoluteness from the very outset. What we witness
nowadays is a rampant and alarming negation of nature and natural law.
Without the support of the Christian religion the natural dimension of
procreation, matrimony and the family is not able to hold its ground.
The so-called “gender ideology”[14] is the most recent outpost of this negation of nature and human identity.
West means Jerusalem, Athens and Rome. Benedict XVI repeated his in his famous speech to the Bundestag in Berlin[15].
However, when Christianity encountered Greek thought and Roman
civilization, in addition, quite naturally, to the Jewish religion, it
discovered in them both openness to transcendence and consideration of
the force of natural law. It found a pre-Christian but human world.
Today, however, it is faced with a post-human and hence radically
post-Christian world.
The religious proposal of laicity
I
have depicted an historical profile more in terms of the history of
ideas than the history of facts, and this itinerary has shown that
laicity is a Christian concept. This concept implies the separation of
the political sphere from the ecclesial one, temporal power from
spiritual power. It does not, however, call for the separation of
politics from ethics, because the political sovereign, who is distinct
from he who exercises spiritual authority, acts according to rational
prudence and not in an arbitrary manner, since “there are limits to what
the State may command, also when it is a matter of what belongs to
Caesar” [16].
Neither in terms of personal will or discretion, nor in terms of a
“will expressed by the majority”: as far as this point is concerned
democracy has not contributed – in theory – to any radical change of
perspective. Insofar as inseparable from ethics, to which it is directly
bound, politics is also inseparable from religion as such and from the
Catholic religion in particular. In fact, the ethical level is
ultimately unable to serve as its own foundation by remaining at the
simply natural level: “If we do not first understand our relationship
with God we’ll never be able to keep these ambits in correct order” [17].
In
modernity, however, another concept of laicity saw the light of day.
Initially this was divined as the secularisation of Christian dogmas,
but then became radically detached from Christianity and from any order,
erecting itself as a new absolute and religious principle. This
happened with positivism understood as a perennial category. In this
manner the political level became completely autonomous from the
religious level, but it also became incompatible with Christianity by
assuming a religious form in itself. This is how relativism became a
dictatorship.
In the face of such a scenario, rather naïve is the
attempt on the part of Christianity to “laicise itself”, abandoning the
cloak of dogmas and doctrine in order to dialogue with the lay world.
If there were anything akin to a non absolute lay level open to human
nature and religion, dialogue on laicity involving believers would prove
possible. Unfortunately, this is not the main trend, and the reason is
quite simple and grave at one and the same time: in order to be ‘lay’ in
the sense we have just seen, laicity needs the Christian religion.
Therefore, a laicity that has projected itself with positivism as an
absolute and religious principle cannot be ‘lay’. This is the paradox of
the west: the farther away people go from Christianity in order to be
‘lay’, all the less are they so.
Following this paradox is yet
another one. If Christians wish to contribute to positive laicity they
must propose the religious dimension of their faith in its completeness,
without any forms of horizontal reductionism. Here as well is the
reason so tragically simple: in a religiously post-human world it is
necessary to begin from the proposal of Christ and then, within the
religious vision, recover the human dimension and hence the ‘lay’
dimension. This is where the Social Doctrine of the Church encounters
“new evangelisation”.
Endnotes
[1]
This expression is used often by Joseph Ratzinger lo indicate the
encounter of the Christian faith with Greek philosophy, and we can also
use it in the broader sense of encounter with the West. Cf for example:
J. Ratzinger, Fede Verità Tolleranza. Il cristianesimo e le religioni del mondo, Cantagalli, Siena 2003, p. 98.
[2] Fundamental references are the works of Christopher Dawson: La formazione della civiltà occidentale, D’Ettoris editori, Crotone 2011; Id., La divisione della Cristianità occidentale, D’Ettoris editori, Crotone 2009.
[3] J. Ratzinger, L’Europa di Benedetto nella crisi delle culture, Cantagalli, Siena 2005, p. 37.
[4] J. Ratzinger,Fede Verità Tolleranza. Il cristianesimo e le religioni del mondo cit., p. 74.
[5] J. Guitton, Il Cristo dilacerato. Crisi e concili nella storia, Cantagalli, Siena 2002, p. 166.
[6] Cf R. de Mattei, Pio IX e la rivoluzione italiana, Cantagalli, Siena 2012.
[7] K. Löwith, Significato e fine della storia. I presupposti teologici della filosofia della storia, Il Saggiatore, Milano 2010, pp. 98-104 (prima edizione 1977).
[8] Ibid, p. 100.
[9] Ibid, p. 101.
[10] Ibid, p. 103.
[11] De Lubac H., Il dramma dell’umanesimo ateo, Morcelliana, Brescia 1988.
[12] J. B. Metz, Sulla teologia del mondo, Queriniana, Brescia 1969, p. 144.
[13] Ibid, pg. 141.
[14] Osservatorio Internazionale Cardinale Van Thuân sulla Dottrina sociale della Chiesa, Fourth Report on the Social Doctrine of the Church in the World (edited by G. Crepaldi and S. Fontana), Cantagalli, Siena 2012.
[15] Benedetto XVI, Seech at the Reichstag in Berlin, 22 September 2011.
[16] J. V. Schall,Filosofia politica della Chiesa cattolica, Cantagalli, Siena 2011, p. 123.
[17] Ibid, pg. 122.
