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The Church and Secularizaton
Robert Coffy
Some Components of Present-day Culture
What do we mean by « culture »? Man's idea of himself, his way of living out his relationship with other men, his conception of society, his concrete relations with the world of nature and his conception of history. Culture is man's way of interpreting the world and living, either consciously or unconsciously, his situation in the world.
We shall consider only four components of modern culture.
1. RUPTURE OF THE UNIT RELIGION-SOCIETY
This aspect of secularization is often analysed. From the origin of man (at least, the origins of history) every society was religious. The stability of society and the social order were based on religion. The gods were the founders and protectors of the city and the city rendered them official and public worship. Religion was « the vital principle of society » (P. Berger), it was its centre and its end. The result of this attitude was that neither society nor governments needed to be justified: it was not necessary for a state to prove its competence and its efficacity; thiswas self-evident, just as the state was self-evident, and everything made sense. *
By attaching the social structures to a divine order, religion not only masked their fragility but also gave them a meaning; they manifested the divine will.
As a human organization society provided for man's human needs. As a manifestation of the divine will it answered his metaphysical questions. In spite of war, epidemic and famine man experienced a fulfilment. He lived in a certain security because the world was coherent: it had a meaning. He had not, as men have today, security against natural disasters, but he had a security which could be described as « moral or spiritual ».
Such an assertion has many different shades of meaning. Indeed, it should not be concluded that the situation was ideal: it is well known that many schools of thought have given expression to their pessimism. The question may well be asked and has in fact been asked: was it not material necessity that led man to seek security in religion? What we wish to show in this summary is the coherence of man's interpretation of the world, a coherence that today no longer seems to exist. We live in a different cultural context and we must understand this clearly.
Christianity has denounced the religious conception of society and we find in Holy Scripture and in the history of the early Church the beginning of the process of « secularization » of society (such is the opinion of certain authors who have made a study of secularization). It remains true, however, that in past centuries the Church lived in its own original and very special way a situation analogous to that of pagan religious society. « Christendom », with its distinction and subordination of power, its pursuit of a common last end, presents an historical realization which was valid at the time. The Church exercised her mission in a way that was adapted to the contemporary culture: she offered a religious vision of the world and of history.
In spite of the rivalry and the struggle between Church and State of which history is full, there was harmony. Society justified the presence of Christianity as the official religion and Christianity justified society. Today this harmony is broken, and we are witnessing the last stage in the process of the secularization of society. Society has progressively freed itself from the tutelage first of the Church and then of religion in general. It does not deny God, but makes of him a parenthesis; it does not oppose religion but behaves as though it did not exist, making religion into a personal affair (« privatization »).
This is the interpretation commonly given to secularization, but it is an interpretation that must be subjected to criticism. It would seem that there are two levels to be distinguished:
a) That society is « profane » is a fact: its organization is no longer justified by religion; every State must be justified by its achievements.
That society acknowledges its incompetence in the field of religion is a fact that we recognize and hail as progress.
b) It remains that the religious phenomenon is a collective one which the State, with its responsibility to procure the common good, cannot ignore.
2. THE « DISILLUSIONMENT » OF THE WORLD
The phrase is M. Weber's. It expresses what we call the desacralization of the universe. This is the other aspect of secularization which is also the object of much study.
« The world is disillusioned not only in the sense that it is no longer conceived of as being inhabited by spirits, by mysterious forces, but in the sense that it is no longer directly epiphanic: the world is the world of man. It is no longer a word of God that man is trying to decipher. It is a work yard that he is exploiting.
« Moreover, because secularization makes him keenly conscious of his responsibility to the world, modern man is more sensitive than before to the evil that is in the universe. He is prone to think that there is too much evil in the world for it to be possible to find any traces of God there.»
The world is disillusioned; it is also « dedivinized ». There is no other world, itself the real world of which ours is the manifestation. There is only our universe, a vast field for scientific investigation and for technical transformation by man. It is the world of man alone. « As a consequence of scientific research and of technical planning by man, secondary causes have become autonomous and predominant. We are, in a sense, witnessing a revolt of means: the causae secundae, simple secondary causes, studied, penetrated and often even produced by man, make it no longer possible to recognize the causa prima, the first cause, God. . . . The divinized world has been transformed into the hominized world, the world of God has become the world of man » (Zahrnt, Dieu ne peut mourir, p. 31). When the religious Athenians listened to St. Paul they departed as soon as he told them of the resurrection. Might not the man of today depart on hearing the first part of St. Paul's discourse to the Athenians?
3. PRIMACY OF THE FUTURE
It has been said that modern man was more a man of the project than of the memory. He has indeed passed from a static to a dynamic vision of the world; the world, by which is meant not only nature but also the social and cultural worlds interpreted by man, is no longer understood as a ready-made framework in which men live out their lives. It is the starting point of a better future. It is not the object of adaptation but of radical transformation. The world is a history, a historical process, a development. It is a reality to be created, to be made.
Man wants to be master of this history: he knows and wills himself to be responsible for the future that is to be created, and he conceives the present in terms of the future. This component of culture explains the vicissitudes of such words as « criticism », « contestation » (to create one must deny what exists), « creation », « creativity », « progress », « utopia ». It explains also the abundance of reflections on hope, the apparition of a « theology of hope » (Moltmann, for instance) which contests the traditional theology of hope, centred as it is « on the desire to leave the world in order to achieve total fulfilment in God », and which also challenges dialectical theology for giving too little place to history. It is in this context that political theology belongs (T. B. Metz). In that research on hope which sees itself as an act anterior rather than ulterior tofaith, we must see an attempt to meet the Christian in his present concern to transcend such dualism as Church-world, nature-supernature, faith-life, so as to bring faith out of the private domain in which some would wish to confine it.
4. HELPLESSNESS OF CLASSICAL METAPHYSICS
The problems which face us are new and varied. The problematic itself is new: man's way of asking questions and of seeking to resolve them has changed. In the words of Fr. Rahner, « the question is no longer one of quantitative change, but of a change that is, in a sense, qualitative ». Many fundamental notions of classical philosophy by which Christian doctrine formerly defined itself seem to our contemporaries to have lost their power to build a coherent vision of the world acceptable to all. The same is true of the notions of substance, matter and form, character, infused virtue, and of the theory of causality which was used to express the efficacy of the sacraments.
The question is not one of « dressing-up » revealed truth, but of reinterpreting it. « Faith functions in self-understanding, and the reflection of the believer and human self-understanding meet so to speak in the same history. Hence we cannot understand, for example, the precise faith content of a Tridentine dogma if, on the one hand, we reconstruct the Tridentine way of thinking and exclude the essential Tridentine categories in which faith was then conceived with its full import and, on the other hand, we disregard the self-understanding which is ours today. Contemporary understanding of the content of faith as it was expressed, say, by the Council of Trent, is possible only through a reinterpretation of this content, because we are incapable of comprehending it in its essence » (Schillebeeckx, Thęologie d'aujourd'hui et de demain, Le Cerf, p. 136). Christianity is forced to make a serious attempt at self-critical reflection and reinterpretation; if she fails to do this she risks passing, not for a that is incapable of being either true or false false system, but, what is worse, for a system because it is unreal.
The Consequences and the Questions that Face Us
1. RELIGION: A PRIVATE AFFAIR
Secular society neither denies nor opposes religion; it relegates it to the domain of private life. This movement has been accentuated by a whole theological trend which was « afraid of a return to any form of political sacralization », as also by an apostolic current which strove to denounce all sociological motives for adhering to faith. It is a fact that secularization has meant an increase of liberty for adherence to faith: it is also a fact that so-called « sociological » Christians are becoming less and less numerous (but is there not always a sociological element in adherence to faith?).
The rupture between religion and society has led to an awakening of the missionary sense in Christians and it must be added that this rupture can be an opportunity for the Church in that it enables her better to reveal « her difference » to the world. When, on the one hand, religion is not the foundation of society and, on the other, society no longer seeks to justify its organization and activity by religion, the result is that the Church has greater liberty with regard to the different societies; it is easier for her to avoid compromise and to show what is original and unique in the Gospel message that it is her mission to announce.
But here a question arises: how, in a cultural context which presents history as the history of man, made by man, is she to tell the world that history is a history of salvation?
Moreover, « we have no contact with the private life of the individual because the very fact that this life is inserted in the world makesof it a political theme » (Zahrnt). The importance today of the political dimension of existence is well known. A « political theology » has come into existence whose chosen objective is to « de-privatize » faith, and which takes into account this political dimension. Its aim is to show that the Gospel is not only for individuals in their private lives, but also for society as such and for its political and social structures, that it concerns the world in so far as the world is a historical and developing reality.
The intention of this theology is excellent. However, it is criticized by certain theologians: is there not risk of justifying faith by its efficacity in transforming the world? In the same way as the former tendency was to justify the Church by its influence on civilization, so the tendency of today would be to justify it by its efficacity in transforming the living conditions of persons and peoples.
It is clear that the Church lives its mystery in its struggle for man. It is also clear that the proclamation of the Gospel should have a repercussion on the political, economic and social structures. What is denounced by a certain political theology is the reduction of the Church's mission to its usefulness to society.
2. RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
In a secularized society Catholicism is no longer the official religion and the Church no longer holds the monopoly. She can do no other than consider herself a part of society: « she can no longer impose her scale of values and her public morality ». The Catholic Church is on the same level and possesses the same rights as the other religions and the different forms of atheism. She enters into a system of competition. This fact makes the Catholic Faith relative. How is it possible in such a context to discern and make others discern the universality of Christianity?
All religions, Christianity included, enter into free competition, in the economic sense of the term. The Christian religion is, in fact, no longer introduced by society, no longer taken for granted; it has become a question of opinion, with the result that the content of faith is freely discussed and contested. « The apparatus of ritual is also relativized and criticized. » The Church, then, must justify the truth she preaches. How? What is being questioned is the credibility of the content of faith, hence the attempts to present this content in such a way as to be worthy of belief; hence the efforts to organize celebrations in such a way as to keep those who practise and attract those who do not practise. « Concern for the client » can unconsciously play its part in the pastoral attitude.
Modern man, however, is untouched by these efforts. He judges by achievement or involvement. The content of faith will be recognized as worthy of consideration only if the « preacher », that is to say, the Christian community, is credible. We feel that it is for the Church to make herself worthy of belief by her way of acting if we want her message and her celebrations to be credible. This observation is in part the foundation of the problematic adopted in the second part.
It explains, to a certain extent, the stress placed on the life of Christian communities and particularly on small communities. We must, however, be careful: membership in a small community where one is happy and where there is mutual love can be a seeking after comfort, a way of escape from the anonymity of the great crowd. Secularized society, which is that of the big city, of the crowd, and which confers benefits on man (social security, comforts, retirement pension, etc.) can well produce the small communityas it produces other forms of security. Is the aim of the small community to provide security for its members or is its mission to proclaim the Gospel to a secularized society?
In a world that defines itself without reference to faith, and whose organization is not influenced by the Church, does not the Church run the risk, on the one hand, of becoming a sect or a plurality of sects — that is to say, of passing from a minority situation to a sectarian mentality — and, on the other hand, of adapting in a « modernist » direction so as to recover lost territory? (J. B. Metz).
3. TRANSFERENCE OF THE SACRED
Secularization is often presented as the negation of all that is sacred, and secularized man as a-religious. Such a presentation is a highly contestable interpretation of secularization, an interpretation based on a quick and superficial analysis of the phenomenon. It cannot be denied that secularization is a criticism of the conception of the sacred as parallel to the profane, of religion as a protection, a refuge from the menacing forces of nature, or as a practice added to existence, and we should welcome this criticism.
But is it true to say that the sacred and the religious can be reduced to one or other of these forms? To affirm this would be to content oneself with preconceived ideas and to fail to see that such a judgment is closely connected with a given culture.
It is important to be attentive to the new way in which man of today, in a secularized world, expresses his religious sense, his sense of the sacred; this new way varies with the cultural context.
It is in his search for the meaning of existence and of the history of humanity that man reveals himself as a religious being. Secularization has in fact led him to a more lively consciousness of his responsibility for the world: he no longer awaits help from another, he is freed from the powers which inhabited his former world and on whom he called for help. He knows that the future depends on him. But to question his responsibility in face of a future to be constructed is to question the meaning both of his future and of his own responsible freedom.
Human consciousness, in all that it undertakes to be effectively responsible and to attain the universal (the future is indeed understood and willed as universal brotherhood), seeks meaning. Not partial meaning such as the meaning of work, of love, of revolt, but the ultimate meaning of human existence, of the universe in its totality, of history. It is in this seeking for the ultimate meaning of all things (the ultimate meaning of partial meanings) that the man of today reveals himself as a religious being. He discovers the sacred less in things than in consciousness and in the relationships which he creates. The question before us is this: how to make contact with him in his search for this ultimate meaning so as to proclaim Jesus Christ to him, Jesus Christ who by revealing the Father reveals man to himself.
4. THE SACRAMENTS NO LONGER « CLOTHE » THE DESTINY OF MAN
In a religious society, that is to say, in a society which in fact finds its justification in a religion, the religious rite (the sacrament or rites of initiation) is part of man's life: it clothes his destiny, it marks the rhythm of his existence and gives it a meaning recognized by all. It gives a religious signification to the important events of his life, and at the same time it situates the human person in society. To baptize a child is to make it a son of God, a member of the Church; it is also to give it all that is necessary for « normal » life in society. Everybody knows what an affront it was, even for a non-practising family, when religious burial was refused to one of its members who, though baptized, was living in an irregular situation.
Today man lives out his destiny in a secular society: he undertakes serious professional, political, national and international commitments.
At this level no religious rite apparently touches him. Thus the Christian sees himself entering upon a series of rites which no longer mark the rhythm of his social actions (but only that of his private actions), and he lives out the important events of his public existence without reference to the celebrations which should give it meaning. When he finds little by little that the sacraments are meaningless for his commitments, that they are « no longer anything more than a practice », he gives up this practice.
How can the Christian sacrament give meaning to man's commitments?
5. THE SACRAMENT NO LONGER THE CHIEF CRITERION OF FAITH
In a religious society the chief criterion of faith is the celebration of the sacraments. The Christian reveals his Christian identity and the quality of his faith by the way in which he « practises his religion ». Practice is the accepted criterion of the spirit of faith.
In a secular society the celebration of the sacraments is no longer, for the non-Christian, the chief criterion. The chief criterion is Christian existence, the life of the different communities, the Church as a whole. The sacrament can have meaning for the non-Christian only through the intermediary of Christians and communities living their faith and bearing witness to it. It is the attitude of the Christian, of the communities, of the whole Church, that is capable of leading a non-believer to question himself about the value of the word and the sacraments which both nourish Christians and build the Church.
6. RATIONAL LANGUAGE, SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE
In a « disillusioned » universe, language is rational and operative, and man's activity finds expression in terms of needs to be satisfied. It is difficult for us to avoid interpreting the content of faith in the same language: interpretation of the sacrament (for example, reducing the Eucharist to the satisfaction of the need for brotherhood), interpretation also of the Church, which is there to supply these needs. Hence we can ask ourselves what image of the Church and of the sacrament is projected in the measure in which we unconsciously accept these interpretations.
* * *
These remarks are schematic. Moreover, they interpret a situation and are hence open to criticism. It seems, however — and the reactions to the report « Evangelization-Sacrament » hint at this — that we cannot avoid reopening the question of the Church itself and this in a new problematic. What has the Church to say about herself to the man of today who is living in a new cultural context? What meaning has she for him? How does she appear to him in her celebrations, her interventions, her action?
« Evangelization and Sacrament » is not a problem that can be studied in itself. No matter from what angle we approach it, we are always referred back to the Church — not to the Church in itself, the ideal, extra-temporal Church, but to the Church in its actual historical realization.
How can we in our research take into account a socio-historical analysis?
This kind of analysis reveals the concrete forms and lays bare the structures which express the relationship of man to God, and thus make it possible for believers to discern at critical moments the deformations and the equivocations that can affect this relationship. The analyses of « privatization » can, for example, be interpreted as deformations inflicted by Christians on Christianity: the God who is God of interiority only, God of the individual conscience only, God of the unhappy conscience only . . . Such analyses oblige us to search for an attitude of man before God today that is authentic: the attitude of a man who is responsible for the universe: « nobody can further his salvation in private, without taking his brother into account; nobody can wish to forge his own destiny by cutting it off from that of humanity and that of the universe. And if somebody were to abandon himself to such an attempt his state of mind would be anything but religious » (H. Urs von Balthasar, Dieu et l'homme d'aujourd'hui, p. 154).
Our reflection on Church-Sacrament and the sacraments cannot but take into account this research. The Church-Sacrament is indeed the Church called to be the place of intercourse between God and the man of today, and each sacrament is destined in its own way to forge this relationship.
* Cf. Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, Doubleday, 1967. L. Newbigin, Une religion pour un monde seculier, Casterman, from the series « Christianisme en mouvement ». See also volumes 6, 8, 12, 15, in the same series.
The editors are grateful to the publishers Le Centurion for authorization to translate and publish these extracts from the report presented in 1971 to the Plenary Assembly of the French Bishops held at Lourdes.
