Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

In an audience with representatives from a recently completed European Meeting of University Professors, Pope Benedict XVI identified three issues that require further study in order to address the crisis of modernity. At root, he says of this problem, modernity is trying to build a kingdom of man divorced from the fullness of the truth about himself.

The three issues are some of the primary concerns that we address here at C-L-S . . . aren’t we smart. These three issues revolve around the reduction of the meaning of the human person to solely the animal aspect of human nature, the reduction of rationality to empirical knowledge, and the solution that Christianity can offer to these mistaken views.

Just a quick survey of what it hopping on any one day on the internet and you can see these problems are real. For example:

Monica sends along a couple of links to hoax sites that, for various reasons, promote the future hopes of medicine as though they were already here today. The first is from what apparently was once a popular advertising technique for movies (where have I been). In promoting their movie, a studio put together a website about the Godsend Institute that made it appear that as though human cloning were already a reality. In a similar vein, we have RYT Hospital, Dwayne Medical Center that tries to make it appear as though such futuristic “therapies” as nanomedicine, male pregnancy, and methods for correction of a baby’s genetic defects at a “pre-embryonic” stage (this phrase gives you an hint about the view point of the authors I would say) have been available for some time. This later site is apparently the creation of an artist named Virgil Wong who has

concurrent careers as an artist/filmmaker, Web Center director, MFA faculty member, and Nia teacher all revolve around his interests in medicine, technology and the human body.” His full-time job is “Head of Web Design and Development for two prestigious non-profit medical institutions.

The content of both of these sites seem to suggest a phenomenon that G.K. Chesterton characterized as a symptom of the loss of authentic religion. Namely, when physical health becomes an obsession. In fact, the way that this manifests itself is the same phenomenon as that which underlies scientism as well. What I mean is that we can fool ourselves only so much. We know ultimately that we are not in control and we need Someone who is. For our culture, this “someone” is the omnipotent god of science and the scientist, the high priest who serves at the altar of secular humanism. Scientism and secular humanism both have in common the reduction of knowledge and in someways the reduction of the human person. However inconsistent it may be though, secular humanism also simultaneously exalts humanity to the position of autonomous deity.

I suspect that this is also what is behind such movements as the “global warming” religion (now I am not saying that environmentalism is bad, just that it must be kept in its proper place; nor am I making any declaration on the validity of the theory). While there is only speculation, and certainly no consensus, that human activity is responsible for a gradual rise in world-wide atmospheric temperature, it seems that very few in the popular promotion of this religion (either in the media or science) are willing to entertain the possibility that there is nothing that we can do about it (whether it is of human origin or not). Thus, the current orthodoxy is that there is human-caused global warming and it is the media’s responsibility to convince the world of this so that enough popular pressure can be brought to bear on governments so that “scientists” can be given what they need in order to “save us.” In fact, the emotional attachment to this religion of “global warming scientism” has become so strong that the heretical suggestions that global warming might not exist are considered dangerous and cannot be allowed public expression. In fact, the practioners of this religion among “scientists” (can you believe it) are driven to falsify any data that brings suspicion upon their religion.

The religion of secular humanism, a close cousin of scientism, also flourishes with the faulty thinking rampant in this “crisis of modernity.” In Germany, the dangers of suggesting that human life begins at conception is such that it must be punished with jail time. Whether it is faulty or not, free speech cannot be allowed to extend to any religious expression that might undermine the religion of secular humanism and so a committe report for the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly has deemed creationsim and intelligent design as threats to human rights and it asserts that the “science of evolution” is paramount to a secure and healthy Europe. Thus, the report urges that “appropriate precautions” be taken to stem these dangerous ideas that threaten to undermine the state religion of “man worship.”

It is perhaps, psychological projection which makes those of the secular humanist faith fear Christianity so much. However, it is appears that when they are in power, they will not hesitate to wield it against anything that threatens their faith.

B16 is clearly correct. This is a crisis of thought, a crisis of reductionism and only the full throated Gospel can effectively mollify it. The irony is that modernity prides itself on reason and dialogue. However, the protectors of the realm’s dogmatic teachings seem to intuitively recognize that they do not have the intellectual tools to engage in a dialogue and so suppression of opposing ideas becomes the only alternative. For most in this unholy magisterium, it would seem that intellectual debate is not welcomed and perhaps not even possible. However, for the less “orthodox” masses it is possible that, not being driven by (anti-)faith, they may be more open to reasoned dialogue and can be made to see the vacuousness of secular humanistic orthodoxy. This is certainly my hope, as perhaps this may avoid a 21st century resurrection of the 18th century’s Reign of Terror. Mercifully, that malignant progenitor of what I think is now possible was confined to France. However, the current trajectory seems to suggest a spawn, secular humanist Regnum hominis, that will endanger the entirety of the West.