CHAPTER 1

The Message in Our Time

The early Church, keenly aware of the Good News proclaimed by Christ and insistently re-echoed by His chosen heralds, was exultantly happy and serenely confident in its living, whole-souled faith in that message. Compared with the peace, joy and hope of the vital Christ-centered response of that age, the faith of the generality of Catholics today contrasts all too unfavorably. Without overlooking a number of encouraging signs of a recently revitalized faith (the growth of foreign missions, the Christlike welfare activities of Caritas, the vitality of new Catholic youth organizations, as well as a maturing press and art), we nonetheless sense that the dominant religious attitude of our Catholic people, taken as a whole, is quite a different matter.

In many areas Catholicism has become a traditional confession--a pattern of local customs and practices, largely sustained by community pressures. Again we find a Catholicism whose religious capital consists for the most part in a sum of obligations--an uninspiring series of "musts" and "don'ts"-- weighing heavily on the conscience but which must be borne, at least with minimal effort, if one is to save his soul. This conventional Christianity of traditional external practices and burdensome duties is constantly threatened by the impact of an ever growing technology, new means of communication and subtle propaganda; in fact, owing to its lack of inner dynamism, it all too often fails to survive or withers away to a bare subsistence level when confronted with the environment of the big city or an alien climate.

Catholicism such as this frequently reveals a growing inner separation from the life of the Church--a religious attitude reduced almost to the impoverished condition of natural religion. All that is genuinely Christian, the truly supernatural--the merciful plan of God revealed in the humanity of Christ, calling for man's inmost participation--all this has been largely lost from sight. Christianity such as this is not the Good News proclaimed by Christ!

The preceding diagnosis has suggested that the main root of today's religious malady is to be sought in an extensive misunderstanding or nonunderstanding of the Christian message. Recognizing that there is no simple panacea (modern economic, social, political, and organizational problems await solution), the foregoing observations do indicate, that in one important danger-area of singular relevance to the vitality of Christian life today the remedy involves the appropriate proclamation of the faith; in fact, it demands that we consider ever more earnestly whether our very way of proclaiming the Christian message may be contributing to the malady by leading to a devaluation of the deepest and most essential truths of faith in the religious thinking of so many.

How, then, meet the situation? By increased instruction in apologetics? Granting the importance of its proper role, apologetics, even in the best of circumstances, only leads up to the faith; it does not enter within it. Hence, it is not the solution. Might the remedy be a more solid and thorough instruction in the individual doctrines of the faith, especially in light of the vigorous complaints about the "terrible ignorance" of Catholics in this regard, for example, about papal infallibility, indulgences, the Immaculate Conception. And this "ignorance" despite the fact that countless Catholics have received in our schools a more extensive and conceptually precise exposition of the doctrines of faith than did priests in the Early Church and well on into the Middle Ages! But, even if such instruction did succeed in imparting a flawless knowledge of all the individual doctrines one has in mind, would it produce the fervor of Christian life, the joyous pride, the enthusiastic response of the early Christians to the Good News? Far from it. Again, might the Early Church have possessed some special doctrine that accounted for its joyousness of faith--a doctrine overlooked by the Church today? This is a phantom! Might they be right who would find the remedy in a flight from the intellect, in a leap towards the irrational-towards religious feelings and experience that they think to find in mysticism, youth movements, liturgy? Here let us but note that, although Christianity is certainly not doctrine alone, it is nonetheless based on doctrine--on the Good News.

Perhaps it is Christ Himself who has given us the decisive answer to the problem in the episode of the disciples going to Emmaus, as recorded by St. Luke (24:13-32). What was His remedy for the dullness of faith of these disciples? A vital understanding of the Scriptures as they unfolded His role of Suffering Servant in the Father's merciful plan of salvation. And the result? Their hearts were aflame with a joyous, enthusiastic faith that leapt into action and enkindled the spirits of others! We witness the very same process in the experience of the Apostles on Pentecost.

There would seem to be a law here that has not been sufficiently appreciated at all times in our religious teaching: that it is not enough to show the necessity and reasonableness of the faith, nor enough to expound every point of doctrine and every commandment down to the very last division; but that it is singularly important to achieve first of all a vital understanding of the Christian message, bringing together "the many" into a consistent, unified whole, that then there may be joyous interest and enthusiastic response in living faith.

This approach is but a particular application of a law which has validity in the whole area of education, and which is being increasingly noted in Catholic educational circles. According to this law, all sound education involves a three-fold activity: nurture (pflegen)--the awakening of the child's latent powers; regulation (regeln)--further development by way of custom and rule and a noncritical adoption and assimilation by the one being educated of the viewpoints and standards of the teacher or guide; formation (bilden)--progress toward maturity by an understanding on the part of the one under instruction of the reasons behind earlier regulative patterns, with a consequent properly motivated self-commitment to the objective order of reality.

Speaking generally, one might say that the Christianity of the Middle Ages, intellectual leaders apart, reflected the second step of this educative process: the life of the individual, merged into the Church-fashioned community, was enclosed from the cradle to the grave within the religious world of the Church by a great variety of expressive forms and organizations. But that day is over. With the turn toward empiricism, toward a more conscious understanding of his own soul and a clarification of the multitudinous laws and interrelationships of the physical universe, the spirit of man--particularly in the rapidly expanding upper-class--outgrew the ingenuous, reserved receptiveness of its period of childhood. At the same time, however, it lost the assurance, once readily assumed, of its standing in the religious structure of Christendom. In the milieu of an upper-struggling urban society, Catholic countries included, preachers now see themselves confronted with a public that is becoming ever more critical, ever more questioning. Even in the area of religion, men soon show themselves unwilling just to listen and accept. Ever greater becomes the number of those who turn aside unsatisfied, as well as the number of those who finally venture on an autonomous management of life, even going so far as to shape a world for themselves which no longer knows sin and no longer needs grace.

Although the Enlightenment in its most arrogant form may have been the special concern of the eighteenth century, the newly awakened impulse of our day to see for oneself and to judge for oneself is far from spent, particularly in the area of the life of the soul. The spirit of the Enlightenment has rather spread out from the urban middle classes into the broad masses. Millions have believed that they could find a direct answer to their questions--even a new gospel--in the violent, simplified world-view of a Karl Marx. The childlike submissiveness which entrusted itself without question to the motherly direction of the Church has long been shaken, even in the most remote town and farm.

From this the following conclusion may be drawn: religious teaching today cannot content itself with the mere handing on of hereditary formulas, nor can it assume, as once it did, that the traditional sum of customs, devotions, pious thoughts and practices, even intensively used, will avail to hold the faithful firmly in the Church and assure security and nourishment for their religious life. Today religious teaching must lead the faithful to a vital understanding of the content of faith itself, that they may interiorly grasp it, and thus grow to spiritual maturity and proper independence in religious life. It must lead in other words to the step of Christian formation. This will demand more than giving the faithful a mere conceptual knowledge of the many individual doctrines of the faith. What is needed is not a knowledge of "the many" but of "the one"--the unity that lies behind "the many," the all-embracing salvific plan of God which, with its light and strength, provides an answer to the needs of man today.

As a renewal of religious life will not come from an arid intellectualism, neither will it result from a flight to the irrational-to the vague world of "feelings." In the schools it has always been recognized that knowledge is an essential step toward value: knowledge must furnish light for desire. Good things are knowable things and the things we know are good things. To the degree that we grasp things with true understanding, will they influence us, particularly when we see them in their totality, that is, in their bearing on all our activity and striving. And it is precisely on this basis that a vital understanding and total-view of religion, which can give a cosmic grasp of reality, is of decisive significance.

This conception of religious knowledge and religious formation has been fully verified by the findings of the rather recent "Will-Psychology" (strength of will is dependent not on intensity of resolution nor on repetition of acts but on motivation aptly applied)¹ and is an ancient Christian inheritance. What importance Paul gives to the right kind of knowledge! (See 1 Cor. 1:5; Tit. 1:1; Eph. 1:1 7f.) And John! (See 1 John 2:3-20; 4:15f.) And above all consider the importance of such knowledge as stressed by Christ Himself: "Now this is everlasting life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ" (John 17:3)!

¹ See J. Lindworsky, S. J., The Training of the Will, trans. Arpad Steiner and Edward A. Fitzpatrick (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1929), p. 47ff.

Back

Next