Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

As I suggested yesterday, I have a host of half-finished posts (o.k., half-started) that I need to complete but of course, I need to comment on a very intellectually provocative essay that just surfaced.

Zenit asked Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the director of the Cardinal Van Thuân International Observatory, to provide more insight into B16’s thought on the role of reason and Christianity in the public sphere.

The essay ran yesterday. In it, Bishop Crepaldi explicates the thinking behind B16’s Regensburg speech and in the Pope’s view, one of the most pressing problems in modern culture. The Regensburg speech was aimed at a culture dominated by the “dictatorship of relativism.”

B16 has recognized that Gaudium et spes’s call to engage modernity in a dialogue is no longer possible because modernity has solidly passed into post modernity. He recognizes that before dialogue is possible it will be necessary to create dialogue partners who can become critical thinkers and, once again, recognize and embrace authentic reasoned thought.

Bishop Crepaldi begins by demonstrating the incoherence of the “dogma” of relativism. He shows that it is “dogmatic” in the sense that it cannot be defended through reason which it rejects, and so it must simply be presupposed and believed. He goes on to discuss the problem of what has been called, “scientism.” Here he explains that public use of reason has been hamstrung by its self limitation to matters that can be addressed only through empirical methods. Rather, this scientisitic thought has deprived itself of the capacity to criticize distorted religious philosophies because it has denied itself the full use of reason.

Having established that relativism is a dead end, unreasonable “faith” and that scientism is an unworkable reduction of reason’s true capacity, Bishop Crepaldi moves on to show how reason can be employed to criticize defective aspects of religion and how religion can and does have a rightful place in the public arena.

However, those who did not read the Regensburg speech very closely 0r did not read my post on it (shameless self aggrandizement I’m afraid) might be surprised by Credpaldi’s next move. He presents Christianity’s fullest expression of truth, Catholicism, as having the unique capacity to promote the common human good in a collaboration with the secular (but not Godless) state. He begins by showing the negative synergy between philosophical relativism and a distorted religious pluralism. He writes:

If a religion teaches a way of life that is not righteous, it cannot be a true religion. Only when man has lost sight of the ability to know what is good and what is true, then all offers of salvation become the same. If we do not have any standards of right living, then all religions are the same. If the standards for right living are relativized, man remains trapped inside religions. Again, this demonstrates that religious relativism is founded on philosophical relativism. Cardinal Ratzinger points out that St. Paul (Romans 2:14ff) does not say that non-Christians will be saved by following their religion, but by following natural religion.

We have to always bear in mind that also the reverse influence is true as well: Religious pluralism in turn produces philosophical relativism. In fact, Benedict XVI reminded us that “The convergence of differences must not convey an impression of surrendering to that relativism which denies the meaning of truth itself and the possibility of attaining it.”

Those shocked that in public dialogue in a religiously pluralistic society, that Crepaldi would dare bring up the suggestion that there is a “true” religion, perhaps demonstrate to themselves the truth of what he says. One might simply think it imprudent to say something like this, but this simply demonstrates that our culture of religious pluralism is intolerant to only one thing, claims of absolute religious truth. He goes on to explain problematic thinking about religion which arises from scientism:

To consider religion as something irrational, according to Benedict XVI, is entirely inconsistent with our whole Western and Christian history. In fact, both Greek thought and the Jewish religion, as well as Christianity, of course, rejected the vision of religion as myth and conceived religion as knowledge and God as Logos.

[snip]

Christianity, and especially Catholicism, cannot accept philosophical relativism, cannot be linked to philosophies that exclude the problem of the truth. This would mean to negate creation and the existence of a creative Spirit. For the same reason, the rational notion of “human nature,” which is currently questioned, is not relinquishable.

Therefore, Christian faith confirms and supports the rational search for truth and calls for a public role of reason that will also include the critique of religions. In fact, we cannot say that all religions relate to truth and reason in the same way as Christianity. They relate to truth and reason in a different manner, which is the same as saying that they are more or less rational and that they can more or less adequately support the public role of reason. This was the theme touched upon by the Holy Father at Regensburg. A God who preaches violence is not a rational God, because reason rejects violence as means of transmission of faith. What is not rational cannot come from the true God.

This is a very bold move. Here is public reason’s criteria for critiquing religion. It is not the indemonstrable claim that all religion is irrational but that there are aspects of all religions (or rather those that do not possess the fullness of truth) that can be critiqued as irrational. In Regensburg, his focus was on those religious traditions which claim that God commands violence as a means of transmission of the faith. Here he shows that compulsion and faith are self contradictory and therefore, this cannot come from a rational God. He goes to explicitly bring out some of these criteria of criticism:

We see here a very important criterion for the evaluation of religions that, in some way, is new to our eyes. Religions are concerned with eternal salvation. Religious relativism says that as far as salvation is concerned, religions are incommensurable, it is not possible to establish which is the most rational. Religions, however, in addition to the promise of an eternal salvation, also say that it starts here on earth.

[snip]

If it is possible to criticize religions starting from the reasons of man, then it must also be possible to criticize them starting from the reasons of man in society,[16] that is from a public religion. Then it becomes clear that not all religions are equally respectful of the good of man in society.

It is also clear that the political power that seeks to organize society according to reason not only cannot relate to all religions in the same way, but should also cherish its obligations to the true religion. Of course, if the political power is based on the relativistic democracy, it will not feel any obligation in this regard. Relativism, in fact, can only express a procedural public reason. When the truth is replaced by the decision of the majority, culture is set against truth. The relativistic presumption leads to the tearing up of people’s spiritual roots and the destruction of the network of social relationships.[17]

Relativism regards all religions as equivalent. It does so because it is incapable of engaging in a public critique of religions because for relativism common good cannot be rationally identified. By doing so, it precludes the possibility for the true religion to religiously support what men do to attain the common good. Here, too, we see a negative spiral. Relativistic democracy produces religious relativism and this strengthens ethical and social relativism.

All this happens when a society is no longer able to use public reason to criticize religions that proclaim polygamy, that incorporate the rite of physical mutilation, that do not respect the dignity of women, that preach violence or offer religious paths that depersonalize and hamper human reason and knowledge. How will our public reason be able to discern between religions if it loses sight of authentic humanity?

Here he has in mind especially Europe. Crepaldi shows that B16 does not shy away from advocating a priviledged place to Christianity, not based upon a demanded adherence to revealed truths, but one demanded by reason itself–a reason purged of relativism and scientism. It is demanded not simply because it is true but also because it is in society’s own vested self-interest of survival and flourishing. He goes on to explain that truth is essential to a healthy functioning society and so society is obligated, not to proclaim a particular faith as true (that is beyond its competence) but to listen to and dialogue with the voice of the religion that teaches the truth that is also accessible to human reason:

These states often acknowledge the contribution of Christianity to their history and to the formation of their cultural identity.

This is extremely important: Acknowledging that their roots are grounded in Greek thought, in the Jewish religion and in Christianity is a crucial step for developing the awareness of their own identity. However, it is not sufficient because, unfortunately, the past can be forgotten and, given the rapid disenchantment of the new generations, it is possible to lose sight of the importance of Christianity even in the face of historical, artistic and cultural examples that bear witness to its civilizing function.

Alongside the criteria of history and culture we also need the criterion of truth, i.e. of public rationality. This, then, will also foster appreciation for our history and the pride of our own identity. If, instead, we lose sight of the idea that Christianity expresses a truth that relates to the human being and that Christianity corresponds to authentic public reason more than other religious confessions, we also lose appreciation for our history and the pride of our identity. When Benedict XVI bitterly wondered if the West truly loved itself,[18] this is exactly what he meant: Does it truly love the truth it has inside itself?

Interreligious dialogue is not founded on religious relativism or indifferentism. This is true for the Catholic religion, but is also true for a public reason that has not entirely surrendered to the dictatorship of relativism. By proclaiming the right to religious freedom, the Church has never meant to deny that Christianity is the true religion or that the state has obligations towards the true religion.

According to the declaration “Dignitatis humanae” of the Second Vatican Council, the right to religious freedom “leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.”[19] Now, from where does the state, which is secular, derive these obligations to the true religion?

Not from being a “Christian” state, but from reason, that is from the natural ability to see truths about man in society, from the ability to understand the common good. This also founds the ability to see that one religion consolidates and helps pursue humanization objectives while another contributes to the degradation of man. Christian religion has this claim, the claim of preaching a “God with a human face.”

Here is a very significant observation. The Second Vatican Council’s proclamation on religious freedom itself says that the state’s obligation to religious freedom does not remove the state’s obligation to truth and therefore, to true religion and the one Church of Christ. I suspect many of us have missed this caveat. Again, it is not in terms of proclaiming a Christian state based upon revelation, but through the use of reason’s ability to see that Catholicism promotes and fosters the common good.  Thus, he points out that DH does in fact seem to call for the state to give a privileged place to the Catholic Church (in some capacity) because it is in its own best interest.

This is a dialogue in which B16 is fully prepared to engage based upon reason alone. However, it is clear that it is going to take a lot of preparatory work to find and develop dialogue partners who have the capacity to think critically. This means finding partners with the ability to make proper distinctions between such things as truth claims which can be discussed according to reason, and the attitude of arrogance which is completely unrelated to the truth claims themselves. In other words, one cannot use reason to simply dismiss truth claims based upon the faulty conflation of claims of possessing the absolute truth with arrogance, or of conflating relativism with tolerance. We must be able to develop partners who can also recognize that discussing differences in belief in which one endeavors to explain why he believes the other’s truth claims  to be wrong, need not lead to personal dislike or disharmony.

In the aftermath of Regensburg, we saw many such dialogue partners step forward from the Muslim academy. I have not yet seen the same from the “secular” academy. If I am correct in this, it is indeed ironic that those who profess their weddedness to reasoned thought seem not to have mastered it as well as have those communities that they so often dismiss as irrational believers.

Go over to Zenit and read the whole essay!