Where is your
God?
Concluding document (Feb 2006) of the Plenary Assembly of the
Pontifical Council for Culture on responding to the challenge of unbelief and
religious indifference today.
A Summary of Some of the More Interesting Points for our Project
Background to the
Instruction
The Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Culture in March 2004 considered the replies from more than 300 competent authorities from five continents along two main axes: “how to welcome the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties of the people of our time (the anchor points for the handing on of the faith) and which are the best pathways to follow for bringing the good news of the gospel to non-believers, misbelievers and the indifferent of our time – how to raise their interest, how to make them question themselves on the meaning of their existence, how to help the Church transmit to them her message of faith and love at the heart of cultures…”
To do this, it is necessary to respond to these questions:
· Who are the non-believers?
· What is their culture?
· What are they saying to us?
· What can we say to them?
· What dialogue can we establish with them?
· What can we do to shake up their interest, stir up their questions, nourish their reflections, and hand on the faith to new generations, often victims of the religious indifference mobilised by the dominant culture?
Changing Backdrop
The aggressive attitude towards the Church, without completely disappearing, has given way, sometimes, to derision and resentment in certain quarters and, often, to a widespread stance of relativism, practical atheism and indifference.
The individual and egoistic search for well-being, as well as the pressure of a culture without spiritual anchorage, eclipse the sense of that which is truly good for man, and reduce his desire for the transcendent to a vague search for spirituality which satisfies itself in a new religiosity without reference to the personal God, without adherence to a body of doctrine, and without belonging to a community of faith nourished by the celebration of the revealed mysteries.
It is a veritable sickness of the soul which induces to live "as though God did not exist", a neo-paganism that idolises material goods, the achievements of work, and the fruits of power.
At the same time, we witness what some people call the "return of the sacred". It is actually the rise of a new religiosity. Rather than a return to traditional religious practices, it is a search for new ways of living and expressing the religious dimension inherent in paganism. This "spiritual awakening" is marked by the complete refusal to belong, and the search for an experience which is entirely individual, autonomous and guided by one's own subjectivity. This instinctive religiosity is more emotive than doctrinal and expresses itself without any reference to a personal God. At the very heart of that which we call religious indifference, spiritual desire is again making itself felt. A new quest that is more spiritual than religious is developing, but it is not a return to traditional religious practices. It is the search for new ways of living and expressing the need for religiosity inherent in the heart of man.
A Cultural Phenomenon - often one becomes a non-believer not through choice at the end of a long inner struggle, but it just happens de facto, because "that's what everybody else does"
New and Old Causes of Unbelief - It would be naïve to blame the spread of unbelief and the new forms of religiosity on a single cause, all the more so since this cultural phenomenon is more tied to group behaviour than individual choice.
·
The
All-encompassing Presumptions of Modern Science
While it remains a problematic, today the faith-science relationship has changed significantly. A certain defiance vis à vis science, a fall in prestige and the reappraisal of its role contribute to a greater openness to the religious dimension of the human situation and are accompanied by the return of a somewhat irrational and esoteric religiosity.
·
The Absolutisation of Man as the Centre of the Universe
Man has come to be considered as "the absolute centre of reality, a view which makes him occupy – falsely – the place of God and which forgets that it is not man who creates God, but rather God who creates man. Forgetfulness of God led to the abandonment of man" (EE,9). The exaltation of the "self" leads to a relativism that extends across the spectres: from the political practice of voting in democracy, for example, derives a criteria according to which every individual opinion has the same value as the next, with the result that there is no objective truths or values of higher or lower worth, nor values or truths which are universally valid by reason of nature for every person in every culture at all times.
·
The
Problem of Evil
Today there is a new aspect to the traditional justification for atheism: the diffusion, amplification and presentation of evil through the mass media, which causes evil to echo ever louder, be it manifest in war, accidents, natural catastrophes, conflicts among individuals or countries, economic or social injustices. Unbelief is more or less tied into this pervasive and subversive aspect of evil, and consequently the rejection and denial of God feed on the continual diffusion of this inhumane spectacle, daily beamed around the world.
·
The
Historical Limits of Christians and the Church in the World
The cause of Catholics drifting into indifference is often tied to a negative or unpleasant event experienced in the Church, often during adolescence; the protest or rebellion of a moment transforms itself over the course of time into a general rejection and finally indifference. Among the causes internal to the life of the Church which push people away, what is most obvious is the apparent absence of a spiritual life in some priests and religious. Whenever some of these lead an immoral lifestyle, many people feel disturbed. Among the causes of scandal, by far the worst due to its objective moral gravity, is sexual abuse of minors. Also scandalous are the superficiality of spiritual life and the exaggerated search for material wellbeing and financial gain, especially in areas where the population is subject to extreme poverty. As many Christians identify the faith with its moral principles, it follows that, faced with certain scandalous behaviour - particularly those in which the protagonists are members of the clergy, many of the faithful suffer a deep crisis in their spiritual journey. Deeds of this kind, orchestrated and amplified, are used by the mass media to damage the reputation of all the clergy of a country, and to confirm the suspicions exacerbated by the dominant culture.
·
New
Factors
Ø Rupture in the process of handing on the faith - One consequence of the process of secularisation is the growing difficulty faced in handing on the faith through catechesis, through the school, the family and the homily. These traditional channels for the handing on of the faith struggle to fulfil their fundamental role.
Ø The Globalisation of Behaviour - Western materialism has projected a lifestyle characterised by success, money, unrestricted competition, individual pleasure, etc., creating many practical atheists and leaving neither time nor desire for something deeper than the immediate satisfaction of every craving. It is the conceit of a full-up society. The culture of globalisation considers men and women an object to be evaluated according to exclusively material, economic and hedonistic criteria.
Ø
The Mass Media - by nature ambivalent, can serve both good and bad
alike. Unfortunately, often they
amplify unbelief and favour indifference, by relativising
the religious factor and sometimes ignoring or even deforming its proper
nature.
Ø
The New
Age, New religious Movements and the Elite - "The proliferation of sects is also a reaction against
secularised culture and a consequence of social and cultural upheavals which
have uprooted traditional religion" (Towards
a Pastoral Approach to culture, n. 24). While the movement known as the New Age is not a cause of unbelief, by
its nature it contributes to the growth of religious confusion.
Secularisation of
Belief
Many who call themselves Catholic, and similarly those who belong to other religions, give in to a lifestyle in which God, or religion, is of little importance. The faith appears void of substance and no longer requiring personal engagement. There is incoherence between the faith-as-professed and the faith-as-lived. People no longer dare declare explicitly their belonging to a religion and the hierarchy is systematically criticised.
The observant critic of our societies sees the lack of clear references in the minds of those who make public opinion and who reject all moral judgement when important aspects of society are thrown into the spotlight by the media, leaving such to the individual appreciation of every individual under the guise of a "tolerance" which simply puts convictions apart and anaesthetises consciences.
New Religiosity
The return of the sacred for those who find difficulty in opening themselves to the infinite, to go beyond the immediate, and to set out on and follow an itinerary of faith. It is a romantic and strongly subjective form of religion, … almost an exclusive reserve for the spirit, in which one can take refuge and contemplate matters in an aesthetic research, where the individual is under no obligation to give an account of his reasons or behaviour.
· A Faceless God - an adherence to a God that often has no face nor personal characteristics… a force or superior transcendent being, but who has no personal attributes, much less those of a Father.
· The Religion of the Self - it is centred on the self, on me. If the humanist atheism of the past was the religion of humanity, post-modern religiosity is the religion of the Self, based on personal success and the achievement of one's own goals. Sociologists speak of a "Biographical Do-It-Yourself Religion" in which each person creates a new image of God at different stages of their lives, starting from diverse material as though it were some form of "Holy Patchwork". This religion of "me" is a far cry from Christianity, the religion of "You" and of "Us", of relation which has its origins in the Trinity, in whom the divine Persons are substantial relations.
·
Quid est Veritas?
– a lack of interest for the question of the truth
characterises the new religiosity. For
many, truth has a negative connotation, associated with concepts such as
"dogmatism", "intolerance", "imposition", and
"inquisition", on the grounds of a few historical episodes in which
the truth was exploited. In Christianity however, Truth is not merely a
theoretically defined thought, an ethically valid judgement, or a scientific
demonstration, but it is a Person whose name is Jesus Christ. Truth and love are inseparable: "In
our time, truth is often mistaken for the opinion of the majority. In addition,
there is a widespread belief that one should use the truth even against love or
vice versa. But truth and love need each
other. St Teresa Benedicta is a witness to this.
The “martyr for love”, who gave her life for her friends, let no one surpass
her in love. At the same time, with her whole being she sought the truth. St Teresa Benedicta
of the Cross says to us all: "Do not
accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as
love which lacks truth! One without the other becomes a destructive
lie". So "only love is worthy of
faith", love becomes the great sign of credibility of Christianity,
because it is inseparable from the Truth.
· Outside History - This new religiosity springs from the contemporary secularised, anthropocentric and self-centred culture, and pretends to do without objective historical reference points. What is important is the capacity to find ways of feeling well.
· New Contrasts –
b. There is a surge of fundamentalism within Christianity as within Islam and Hinduism: in an age of uncertainty they seek security by fossilising religion in the past. This responds to the need for spiritual and cultural identity in a world prey to deep changes. Fundamentalism is the negative aspect of the new religiosity.
c.
The search
to elaborate a new civil religion, is also being
felt in various countries, particularly in
Concrete Proposals
A challenge is not an obstacle. This missionary task belongs to the whole Church without exceptions. It can not be separated from the whole life of the Church, nor is it a specialised activity to be entrusted to a few experts.
Dialogue with
Non-believers
The most appropriate pathway is
the dialogue which is personal, patient, respectful, loving, sustained by
prayer, and which has at its heart the proposition of the truth in appropriate
ways, at the just time, and in the firm belief that the truth is only imposed
on its own terms, and moved by the desire "that all come to know you,
Father and he whom you have sent, that is Jesus Christ" (Jn 17:3).
· Prayer for non-believers - Friendly dialogue must be accompanied by intercessory prayer.
· The centrality of the human person - a fertile terrain for dialogue with non-believers can be found in an anthropological approach centred on the fullness of the human person and without instrumental fragmentation. Our mission is to meet this person, taking his hand if necessary, but without pretending to create an ideal according to our needs and desires, to then pretend to be the guides for a perfect humanity, i.e. a humanity which is made to measure our desires. Such an error would mean that we reply to questions never asked, and find ourselves as safe and sure guides, but with nobody to lead.
Suffering is an inevitable travelling companion for every person… Faced with sickness, suffering and death, pain provokes the loss of meaning and a kenosis, and makes space for the search for a word, a face, someone capable of offering a ray of light in the depths of darkness.
·
Content
and manner of dialogue with non-believers – can focus on some privileged
themes…the big existential questions and the major themes of society. In some circumstances this takes on a more
formal aspect and acquires a public nature – organised discussions and debates.
Evangelisation of the
Culture of Unbelief and Indifference
It is also necessary to evangelise the conscience of a people, its ethos, its culture (cf. Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 18). If culture is that by which man becomes more man, the spiritual atmosphere within which he lives and carries out his activity, it is clear that the spiritual health of man hangs on the quality of the cultural air which he breathes. The evangelisation of culture aims at letting the Gospel penetrate the actual situation of the lives of the people of a given society. "Pastoral practice must undertake the task of shaping a Christian mentality in ordinary life" (Ecclesia in Europa, n. 58). More than at convincing, such evangelisation aims at preparing the ground and at enabling listening, a type of pre-evangelisation. If the basic problem is indifference, the necessary task is to attract attention, to stir up the interest of the people. The challenge is to identify the footholds or points of anchorage for the proclamation of the Gospel.
As is well known, one person's speech does not always guarantee another's understanding. An enormous effort is asked of us to use the language of today's people in order to share their needs and to respond to them sincerely and in an accessible manner.
Ensuring the presence of the Church in the public arena in
dialogue with non-believers means bridging the gap between the spiritual realm
and daily life, to raise the questions and provoke the quest for the invisible
in the heart of the visible. It means prodding up real questions before
proposing convincing responses. Indeed, in the absence of the very question -
and hence a personal interest - they will not captivate attention and will not
be considered relevant.
A New Language to Spread the Gospel
The first problem is that of language. With which language can we share the Good News of Christ, unique saviour of the world? The culture of indifference and of relativism, borne of the secularised west does not favour communication based on objective discourse. In such conditions, dialogue and even communication are seriously compromised. If those who live in this culture have difficulty discovering the res significata, i.e. Christ himself, it is necessary to rethink the res significans, i.e. all that leads to Him and the mysteries of the faith, according to the culture of the addressees of the Gospel message, for a renewed evangelisation.
Some television channels, such as
MTV, base their success among the youth by combining anger and sympathy,
sarcasm and tolerance, responsibility and unfretted egoism. Adopting to a
certain extent this kind of strong emotive language, and of course purifying
it, the Church's dialogue with the youth is facilitated, and through a direct
and meaningful relationship established with the people, the aspects of their
culture which are negative can be transformed from within, and those which are
positive sustained.
The culture of the meaningful relationship is indispensable if Christian witness is to involve "the other" in an itinerary of faith. The primacy of the person and of personal relationships is essential for evangelisation. Authentic missionary contact comes through dialogue and through the building up of interpersonal relationships. Such openness is realised by being "near" all those who struggle to develop good relationships whether within the family, or within the Christian community itself.
To evangelise today's cultures requires a loving and intelligent immersion into them, to understand them in depth and to be present therein in all its aspects and with true charity.
The Way of Love
"What does most to reveal God's presence, however, is
the brotherly charity of the faithful who
are united in spirit as they work together for the faith of the gospel and who
prove themselves a sign of unity" (Gaudium et Spes, n. 21). The witness of charity is the most
convincing argument to prove the existence of God; it is the "better
way" of which
In Synthesis
A synthetic vision of the indications, suggestions and proposals by people coming from different cultures, from five continents and from their various pastoral experiences, allows us to set out the following points which merit particular attention.
a. The importance of witnessing the beauty of being a person loved by God.
b.
The need to renew Christian apology to give an account
with gentleness and respect of the hope that animates us (1 Pet
c. Reach homo urbanus through a public presence in the debates of society and put the Gospel in contact with the forces that shape culture.
d. The urgency of learning to think, from school to university, and to have the courage to react, faced with the tacit acceptation of a dominant culture often marked by unbelief and religious indifference, by a new and joyous proposal of Christian culture.
e. Show to the non-believers, indifferent to the question of God but open to human values, that to be truly human, is to be religious, that man finds the fullness of his humanity in Christ, true God and true man, and that Christianity is a good news for all men and women in all cultures.
Conclusion
The combined phenomena of spiritual void and homelessness, of institutional defiance and of emotional sensitivity of the West, call for a new fervour and authentic Christian life, of courage and of apostolic creativity, of uprightness of life and doctrinal correctness to witness through renewed believing communities to beauty and truth, the greatness and incomparable force of the Gospel of Christ. The interrelated challenges of unbelief, religious indifference and the new religiosity are just as much calls to evangelise new cultures and the new religious desire appearing under a pagan and gnostic form at the dawn of the third millennium. This is the urgent pastoral mission for the whole Church in our days, at the heart of all cultures.