Thursday, May 2, 2013
The Catholic Church and the Republic of Modernity: Challenges for Pope Francis, ABC April 8, 2012
The
Catholic Church and the Republic of Modernity: Challenges for Pope Francis
ABC RELIGION AND ETHICS8 APRIL 2013
"Francis,
don't you see that my house is being destroyed," Francis of Assisi heard
Christ call. "Go and rebuild my Church." As scandal and avarice
eroded the Church from within, and heresies flourished without, Francis led a
reform-movement by his example of simplicity, humility and virtue. Jorge Mario
Bergoglio's decision to take the name of the Church's most popular saint was a
stroke of genius.
This man who
catches buses, cooks his own meals and has renounced the princely acoutrements
of the Church has endeared himself to the world. On Maundy Thursday he added
another layer to the story when he washed the feet of young male, female and
Muslim prisoners, in an act of tenderness which captured the world's attention.
The Church hasn't had such positive headlines in a decade.
While the honeymoon
may soon be over, a certain afterglow is likely to remain and even be fanned
back into flame by this man's extraordinary, natural acts of genuine charity
and compassion. He has a certain pastoral genius, but his efforts at deep
reform face myriad challenges.
Benedict's brave
decision to change the balance of powers between heaven and earth, declared the
future no country for old men. It seemed a declaration that the time for a
fresh engagement with the modern world had arrived. Although Francis looks
likely to maintain doctrinal fidelity, he walks and talks like a reformer.
Together, these events suggest that a new age in the Church may well be
dawning.
I
To modern eyes, the
Church looks weak and ailing, plagued by scandal and challenged by charges of
irrelevance to the modern world. The crisis of confidence is, of course,
understandable given the many failings of the Church in its long history. The
sins are real. The sex abuse crisis, along with the Church leadership's failure
to respond with compassion and justice, will stain the Church for decades. The
painful process of redemption is still in its infancy, but the Church has
ridden times of far greater crisis, and endured.
Judging by
Francis's own remarks, he seems to understand that in order to do its work in
the modern world, the Church must inhabit the modern imagination. The Church
and what I call the "Republic of Modernity" speak different languages
and privilege different virtues. The Church values continuity and endurance,
while modernity praises novelty and efficiency. Dialogue between people with
different worldviews, like learning another language, takes discipline and
practice.
The task of the
Church is to translate Christ's wisdom into the language - the worldview - of
the day. Absent this, Christ's message simply cannot be shared. In this task, I
believe the Church is failing. Too often it allows its antipathy toward
modernity to be more determinative than its love for humanity. In this way, it
denies itself the knowledge necessary to advance its mission. Catholicism
betrays itself and its message by becoming a separated ghetto of nostalgic
piety.
II
To see the Church
through modern eyes is to miss her beauty. Many moderns, of course, would like
to see the Church turn to dust; others doubt she can survive. They question
both her capacity and purpose in the modern world. Her forms, imagination,
centralisation, exclusion all seem anathema to the standards of a secular age.
Equally, the Church
has a clear eye on modernity's limits. From the Church's vantage-point, the
fatal conceit of modernity is that it thinks it has reached a sort of promised
land, the end of history, by means of science itself. And yet science cannot
but reduce the world into visible or measurable forces. Science focuses on each
component with ever-greater clarity, but is no grand-master when it comes to
the sweeping narrative of life.
The pillars of
modernity - democracy, science, economics and the self - are means of achieving
other ends. The modern-scientific worldview yields a two-dimensional picture,
one that is silent on the third dimension - that of meaning and purpose. This
renders modernity constitutionally blind to the power of an institution which
concerns itself - at its best - with bringing Christ's wisdom and love to life.
Reason untempered by faith is thus as dangerous as faith untempered by reason
(precisely the point of Benedict's Regensburg lecture).
Modernity may be a
biased critic, but engagement between these two worlds should nonetheless yield
fruit. Leaps of human creativity have always come from exchange between
profoundly different worlds: the Mughal Empire (the meeting of the Muslim and
Hindu worlds) and the Renaissance (the wisdom of the Classical age and the
structured medieval mind) are but two examples from thousands. Let me sketch
the outlines of another such engagement.
III
The art and
letters, architecture, painting and sculpture that adorn the Christian canon is
a sacred treasury which risks being inaccessible to the next generation. The
Church is a living museum for the humanities, an ark which houses the wisdom of
over four thousand years: the Egyptian afterlife; Abraham, Moses and the Jewish
patriarchs; Plato, Aristotle and the classical world; the religious symbolism
and paraphernalia of the vanquished Etruscans; the ascetic and monastic wisdom
of the Desert Fathers and Benedict; the power and pageantry of the collective
Roman and Byzantine worlds.
In every age, the Church has taught the arts of living. As contemporary
authors like philosopher Alain de Botton and
sociologistRobert Putnam have observed, the Church retains
knowledge and skills in many of the lost arts of living: building communities,
serving the needs of others, living a life of sacred covenants, sacraments and
spiritual growth.
The Church offers comfort when modernity's promise of control and order
fails: we humans suffer; we are left behind in the race of life; we are hurt,
fail, find ourselves confused, unable to fathom our inner canyons, nor our
place in the world; finally, we face death. Philosopher Jurgen Habermas describes
"the awkwardness of non-religious burial practices," and how the
"modern age has failed to find a suitable replacement for a religious way
of coping with the final rite of passage." Believers, then, will always be
strangers in this land, because in the depth of its nature modernity does not
have room for the soul.
Moreover, beyond
individual comfort, and since the time of Jesus, Christians have stood in
solidarity with the poor and vulnerable. Compassion has animated many in the
Church for a hundred generations. Today, over 50% of all healthcare in Africa
is delivered by the Catholic Church - the planet's most widely distributed
welfare-network. Will that be sustained by the next generation in the absence
of radical reform?
The modern world
has largely lost access to the magnificent artistic, practical, intellectual and
spiritual endowment that is the Church's gift to humanity. Francis must find
new ways for these gifts to be shared with the modern world.
IV
The Church's longevity flows from her capacity to reconcile endurance
with change, to deal creatively with dissent. In recent times, the Church seems
to have lost much of this capacity. Jaroslav Pelikan once proposed that
while tradition "is the
living faith of the dead," traditionalism "is the
dead faith of the living." Benedict grasped the vitality of tradition, but
perhaps it will fall to Francis to help the Church to renounce traditionalism
and be a learning institution once more.
It should be said the belief that the Church is now in a diminished
state is by no means universally held. Eminent Vatican watcher George Weigel, for
example, points to John Paul II as the architect of a renewed drive to
challenge modernity on its own terms - a turning-point from the defensive
posture of the counter-reformation. This is doubtless correct, and the now
underway "new evangelisation" carries on the vision of John Paul II.
But this renewed drive came at a price - namely, centralisation, which was left
undismantled by Benedict.
The current top-down
Church is simply not viable in the information age. Subsidiarity - the
long-held organising principle of the Church, that matters ought to be handled
by the smallest, lowest, and least centralised competent authority - must be
restored by Francis. Subsidiarity resonates with modernity. Modern biology and
economics alike show us that decisions are best made on the ground where they
can incorporate local conditions, adaptations and opportunities. That Francis
has come, in his own words, from the "end of the earth" augers well;
perhaps the Church will now practice what it has long preached.
In fact, the
Catholic Church has a special task to reconcile itself with economics. The
various papal encyclicals present an often confused and inconsistent curriculum,
made worse by the various pronouncements by diocesan bishops' councils, framed
with little economic understanding at all. This must be remedied. Economics is
a dominant language of modernity. The Church can little afford not to speak it.
At the heart of the Church's struggle to be relevant in prosperous lands is its
inability to be consistent about economics.
V
It is said that the
Church today is held together by old men and sticky-tape. But like all
institutions - universities, political parties, professions - the Church faces
a "war for talent." This will likely become the defining issue of the
immediate future. In a choice-rich world, having sufficient stewards and
priests and lay leaders of ability is tough.
There have never
been more baptised Catholics than there are alive today - 1.3 billion souls -
but as the world gets rich, people lose faith. Without change, the Church's
numbers will peak in the coming decades, and then suffer precipitous decline.
Francis can see that Catholicism thrives no better in Singapore or Chile than
it does in Western Europe. A change of course is needed.
The gap is also
widening between the clerical Church and its lay leaders. Too many positions
require clerical fulfilment. St Francis was not a priest but a deacon, and yet
he sparked a Europe-wide revival in the Church - will this Pope who has taken
his name embrace the role of the laity now as crisis looms.
Along the same
lines, the question of women's contribution in the Church's leadership and
evolution will not go away. Left unaddressed, this issue will remain an agony
for many. Eventually, the desperate need for talent will force the Church's
hand - surely it is best for Francis to save the pain and make the change now.
VI
Pope Francis must enter into modernity's beating heart, and inhabit both
its promise and it limits, and thus derive the lessons for the work of the
Church today. Humanity requires an engaged Catholic Church, shaping the
imaginative possibilities of the future. The great modern synthesisers of
evolutionary biology, psychology, economics and epistemology are arriving at a
new humility and championing new ideas of human solidarity, morality and the
origins of virtue. The Church simply cannot afford not to engage
with them. This is the new ecumenism.
Francis must engage
with modernity, not in pursuit of the shallow liberalism of permissiveness and
identity, but to meet the deepest yearnings of humanity for community, freedom
and love. Francis would appear to have the leadership ability that Benedict,
for all his subtlety and brilliance, lacked. He can call modern
Catholics-in-exile to return to rebuild Christ's Church.
The exclusion of
women from the halls of creativity and leadership will need to be sacrificed to
keep faith with a people who know women hold up half the sky. All are needed to
help to translate the Church's message into new idioms and world-views, so that
this great tradition - the ark of so much of humanity's story - can be shared
with the wider world.
VII
As I noted at the outset, it is the Church's flexibility that has always
underwritten its endurance. Thomas Babbington Macaulaysaw
this, and described in majestic terms:
"No other institution is left standing which
carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the
Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre.
The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of
the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the
Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned
Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty
extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable.
The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But
the republic of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy; and the
republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in
decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The Catholic
Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as
zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin, and still confronting
hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number
of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New
World have more than compensated for what she has lost in the Old ... Nor do we
see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching.
She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical
establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she
is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before
the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when
Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped
in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when
some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take
his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St
Paul's."
Pope Francis
inherits the responsibility to make the changes that will prevent the Church -
and her spiritual, intellectual and artistic treasures with her - from being
"lost in the twilight of fable." To do this he will need to bring the
two worlds - the Catholic Church and the Republic of Modernity - together to
break bread. Perhaps then they can create a new synthesis of truth, beauty and
goodness.
Elena Douglas is the convenor for
the Centre
for Social Impact at the University of Western Australia (UWA).
She was the convenor of the Religion & Globalisation initiative at UWA, a
partnership with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.
Develop indigenous economy, says Marcia Langton, AFR December 12, 2012
Develop indigenous economy, says Marcia Langton
PUBLISHED: 12 DEC 2012 05:21:59 | UPDATED: 12 DEC 2012 05:44:30
ELENA DOUGLAS
Marcia Langton’s Boyer Lectures mark a turning point in indigenous economic history. In them, she presents both a portrait, and an argument.
The portrait depicts the economic, demographic and cultural shifts in Australia’s north, where indigenous people own 82 per cent of the land, with economic interests closely aligned with non-indigenous Australians in mining, cattle, and tourism.
The argument is for indigenous entrepreneurs, wealth creators and workers to be the centre of policy efforts to expand the reach of this economic renaissance.
Langton approaches the landscape of events moving from the epic to the personal and back, interrogates the historical record, and asks “why the economic life of Aboriginal people has come to mean mendicancy on the welfare state”.
She attacks opponents of Aboriginal economic interests, whether mining corporations past or present-day refusal by “romantics, leftists and worshippers of nature” to admit that “Aboriginal people, like other humans, have an economic life, are caught up in the transforming encounter with modernity and have economic rights”.
A cultural fault-line of 21st century Australia is thus laid bare with unmistakeable consequence.
Mabo and the Native Title Act are the pivot from conflict to negotiation between miners and Aborigines. Langton recounts the evolution of private-sector engagement in mining and energy, with its bold employment targets, on-the-job training, contracting and procurement totalling billions in recent years. Her comparative research project on Agreements, Treaties and Negotiated Settlements frames the story.
She tells of elders reinstating the work ethic and building a “diversified regional economy to free their members from the drudgery of poverty and indignity of welfare dependence”. She lauds their determination to solve problems and the alliances formed with experts to create the markets and institutions to build wealth.
There is nothing utopian in Langton’s reach. The change she describes as “radical but incremental, and with each success, more challenges to face”.
Her frustration with government is palpable. She trusts corporations and philanthropic bodies to proffer the best advice on the establishment of market systems.
Langton’s fear? That the stasis in indigenous policy will threaten the precious achievements of Aboriginal workers and business people. She calls for policy to move from protectionism to empowerment; incentives, tax reform and amendments to trusts unlocking the full potential of mining agreements.
Wealth creation becomes the central project for indigenous Australians. The conversion of assets into income streams presents heroic challenges, yet offers the most realistic prospects of “closing the gap”.
Last week at the Centre for Social Impact’s Indigenous Business and Enterprise Conference at UWA, Langton was electric in the company of the new generation of indigenous entrepreneurs, business advocates and advisers, driving this transformation.
The challenge is epic, but Langton’s Boyer lectures contain the ideas capable of inspiring the economic renewal of indigenous Australia. Don’t miss them.
Elena Douglas is convenor of the Centre for Social Impact, UWA Business School.
The Australian Financial Review
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