Fr Michael Paul Gallagher SJ explains that the new culture we are living in today is not necessarily acting against the Christian faith, but it calls the youth of today to make decisions about their life and spirituality.
Some months ago in Rome, I arrived early for an appointment and since there was a church nearby, I decided to spend a short time in prayer. Inside there was a wedding anniversary Mass in progress. The elderly couple were on special chairs in front of the altar and various generations of the family were in the front benches of the church, all in their Sunday best.
The priest was giving a homily, so my space for prayer was not going to be as quiet as I hoped. Inevitably I listened to the homily – but with an increasing sense of sadness. The priest praised the old couple for their fifty years of fidelity but then went on to denounce ‘modern culture’ for its lack of roots, its distance from Christian values, its selfishness and moral fragmentation. He seemed to have little sense of the different generations listening to him. I was relieved when I had to leave to go to my meeting before this litany of complaints had finished.
Why recall this episode here? Because that priest was partly right: modern culture can leave people scattered like sheep without a shepherd, as the gospel says. It was his tone that seemed wrong to me. He made no attempt to enter the world of the younger generations present or to recognize their different needs. He seemed to see nothing good in the new context where they have to live.
Since our theme for this article deals with handing on the faith in this culture, let me imagine a different approach. Not in the form of a homily. More as a set of pointers for reflection.
Exactly twenty-five years ago Pope John Paul II created a new `Pontifical Council for Culture’ in the
Vatican. Indeed I worked there for five years in the early ’90s. The Pope’s initial idea was to have an outreach to the world of creative culture (what we can call Culture with a capital C): the thinkers, artists, writers, intellectuals and so on. It was a field that John Paul had particular affection for, having been himself a philosopher, poet and dramatist.
However as the years went on, he broadened the scope of the Council to include what he called ‘living culture’ (culture with a small c we might say). Gradually the Church has come to recognize that this ordinary culture is a powerful presence, shaping everyone’s way of life. Like the air we breathe, we all assimilate a vision of the world, a set of often hidden assumptions about the priorities of life. This kind of culture is more a matter of lifestyle than of explicit ideas. It is like an iceberg, largely invisible but none the less influential for that. It is like a language we learn and that we take for granted. It gives us what we call our ‘common sense’.
This ocean of ordinary culture that surrounds us has changed enormously in the last generation or so. How can we describe these changes and their impact on faith? First of all it is much less simple and unified than before. At least in Ireland until the ’60s we lived in a sheltered world, literally an island culture. Christian faith was part of the inheritance of nearly everyone. It was passed down in families, in parishes, in schools.
But today – and I think this was a major point neglected by that Roman priest – faith cannot be such a smooth inheritance. It has to be a decision and often a decision against the tide. So the key question becomes: what can the Church do to foster that decision? Perhaps the older languages of faith, with their emphasis on obedience and sacramental practice, will not nourish people as in the past.
That old couple, celebrating fifty years of marriage, grew up in an easier time for the transmission of faith. They probably found a deep sense of God through their fidelity to church attendance. But their children and grandchildren swim in a different sea, with confusing cross currents, so to speak. Their road to Christ will have to be less passive, more personal, more spiritual, more an explicit commitment.
Does this mean that ‘modern culture’ is an enemy to faith? Not necessarily, but it is more complicated and more confusing. In a time of new wealth and new technology, the old expressions of faith can seem not so much incredible as unreal. New entry points are needed, not condemnations of the culture.
Some months before he was elected Pope, the then Cardinal Ratzinger gave an interview to a somewhat anti-clerical Italian newspaper and answered a question about the new situation for faith in these words: ‘The core of Christianity is a love story between God and humanity. If we could understand this in the language of today, everything else would follow… Lifestyles now are very different and therefore an intellectual approach on its own is not enough. We have to offer people living spaces of community and of gradual growth together.’
To recognize the new challenge is a first step towards a new tone. It will be a tone of invitation rather than of command. It will try to awaken people’s often silent desires of the heart. It will give them tools to question the more superficial sides of the surrounding culture.
In a sense, faith will always be in tension with the culture, but that does not mean it should simply moan about it. In the words of the German theologian Dorothy Soelle, `What is appalling in our culture is that most people have no language at all for speaking of their spiritual dimension.’
In the same line is a famous remark by Karl Rahner, that the believers of tomorrow will be mystics or they will not be believers at all. He did not mean that everyone would be a contemplative or have extraordinary experiences of God. He spoke of a mysticism of the everyday, of a capacity to recognize the call and the fruits of the Spirit in ordinary choices and experiences.
All this means that faith in the future will need to be more mature to survive in a more complex culture, just as a plant in the ground can weather storms only if its roots are firm and deep. To echo a line of the poet Hopkins, Our hope and our prayer becomes: send our roots rain.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (May 2008), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
