Category: Culture

5 min read

Culture

Truth and Truthfulness

Sister Anna Mare McGuan

May 21, 2019 8:17 am May 21, 2019

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5 min read

“For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said…

“For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” (Jn. 18:37-38)

This snippet of dialogue comes from part of a conversation between Pontius Pilate and Jesus on Good Friday. After asking Jesus “What is truth?” Pilate walked away from him. He didn’t wait to hear the answer. Was he not interested in an answer? Or, cynically, did he believe there wasn’t one? Perhaps Pilate didn’t think that truth exists at all.

What he didn’t say is “There is not truth.” That would, of course, be false. And yet many people make that claim today. That very statement is self-contradictory and self-refuting. The reason? If it is correct, then it would be true. But, then, nothing can be true, and therefore, “There is no truth” cannot be true. The reasonable and logical outcome, then, is that “There is truth” must be correct.

Context

Since truth exists, then, what is it? There are multiple ways of explaining it, all of which are related to one another. Additionally, what one means by “truth” has to be properly understood. Since the meaning of truth can be a bit complicated, it is worth looking at how we should understand it in a normal, everyday context, and then how a person’s relationship to truth plays out in his life and actions.

Perhaps the best way to start is to focus on the truth as it is normally understood in conversation and interaction: that is, the truth about the things around us. When an object is perceived, if it is perceived correctly, then it is said to be known “truly.” For example, if a woman sees a dog but calls it a banana, another person will correct her and say,“No, that is a dog, not a banana.” Her initial assignment of the category “banana” to that particular canine was erroneous and, therefore, she did not identify the truth about what it was.

Notice that this fundamental way of perceiving and naming nature presupposes that nature is something that can be known and understood. It also presupposes the normal, innate human capacity to perceive and rightly judge what things are in the world. Both of these are reasonable starting positions. This means that, unless a person is somehow impaired, that person can know the truth about things. As a starting definition, then, one could say with Thomas Aquinas that truth is “the equation of the thought and the thing.” In that statement, the word “equation” means that the perception of the object matches up to what the object is in itself.

Drawing conclusions

From this very basic ability to perceive reality for what it is, all sorts of other truths come to light. People begin to reason about reality. That means that they are able to draw conclusions about more and more of what can be known. This is where areas of learning, like philosophy, art, science, literature, math, grammar, etc. begin to develop. Over the centuries and millennia of human existence, this body of knowledge has grown as the human race has grown. Truth, then, has to do with the intelligibility of the world and human capacity to know it. The adjective “true” describes the accurate perception of reality and also the logical reasoning based upon that perception.

Yet, there is even more to truth than this objective and rather dry description. Truth is also something that people desire and expect from one another. How does one person give truth to another? The Catechism of the Catholic Church reads: “Truth as uprightness in human action and speech is called truthfulness, sincerity, or candor. Truth or truthfulness is the virtue which consists in showing oneself true in deeds and truthful in words, and in guarding against duplicity, dissimulation, and hypocrisy” (No. 2468).

Another way of saying this is that the truth living in a person is the virtue of truthfulness. Truth becomes a part of one’s identity and of one’s way of interacting with other people in the world. Without the virtue of truthfulness, individuals fracture interiorly (that is the meaning of the “duplicity, dissimulation, and hypocrisy” in the quote above) and society consequently degenerates. Thomas Aquinas said it this way: “Men could not live with one another if there were not mutual confidence that they were being truthful to one another.” Living in falsehood and then perpetuating those lies does have serious consequences — at the very least, there will be a lack of personal integrity and a negative impact upon community and society as a whole.

Witness

There is an alternative to that rather dismal picture. No one person alone can make a society truthful. Each person can only decide how he or she will bear witness to truth personally. The mechanism that was mentioned above, namely, accurate perception and then proper naming of that perception, can be applied to human speech, action and interaction.

Through choices to speak and act in truth, a person becomes truthful and virtuous. That, in turn, has an effect on society. The transformation of the community, however, only happens through the transformation of its members. The building up one one’s personal integrity through truthfulness happens one choice at a time. The solidifying and reintegration of society occurs through the same process happening in multiple persons over generations. The ability to identify and speak truth, and be truthful, is a chief characteristic of a society wanting unity and peace.

Sister Anna Mare McGuan is a Religious Sister of Mercy of Alma, Michigan. She serves the Diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee, as the director of the Office of Christian Formation.

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6 min read

Culture

Called to Community

Sister Anna Marie McGuan

April 11, 2019 1:52 pm April 11, 2019

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6 min read

Men and women are by nature social animals. We usually grow up in a familial setting and attend school with other boys and girls. We learn, through these relationships, what…

Men and women are by nature social animals. We usually grow up in a familial setting and attend school with other boys and girls. We learn, through these relationships, what appropriate social behavior is and what is not. We also learn that friendship can be a rich source of personal and communal growth. Society also tends to organize itself into groups of people, such as an extended family, a church, a business, a service organization, etc.

We now have the capacity to be in contact with friends and family (and strangers) all over the world at the touch of a screen. What is it that people are looking for in social interaction? How does one’s social nature help to deal with loneliness that everyone sometimes feels? How do people foster goodness as social beings? The first thing that people seek through social interaction is identity. Who am I? Who are you? How do we fit together?

Made for Community

First, we are born into relationships. The family is considered the fundamental cell of human society. In the family comes our first identity: as treasured son or daughter. In the family, our intrinsic value can be affirmed and, at the same time, the members can be encouraged to live up to their value. No one comes from a perfect family, but everyone comes from a family that can be better. The family becomes better when its individual members become better, more virtuous people. They do that by forming one another through truthful dialogue and corresponding action.

Second, people look for the ability to decide — and live with the decision of — “Who am I?” This is different from the identity of belonging to a certain family, or being a certain child within that family. This second answer to “Who am I?” builds on the first, stepping into the realm of freedom and holding counsel with oneself. Here human persons use their free will, in control of their own actions, to form themselves further. A person is known and revealed by his acts. It is through free-will action that people establish themselves as individuals in the world. Granted, they are already individuals, but they make up their minds themselves about who this individual is and what this individual is about. This requires making choices in society, both within the family and without. At this point, however, a person seeks personal integrity through free choice and communion with others.

Third, part of being social opens people up to areas of potential growth. Through interactions with others, for example, a young person may begin to experience in which he or she can make a positive difference in the life of another. On the other hand, he may also see how negative consequences of his choices adversely affect others (individually and as a group). Both are useful for a deeper self-knowledge and a greater humility. People can always improve, meaning that they can always make more and better choices that correspond to their own dignity and, at the same time, uphold the dignity of others.

Better for Ourselves and Others

The desire to be better, to be more real — to be one’s best self even — dwells within the human heart. To deny this is to shut down or handicap our rational nature. Human freedom is not meant to atrophy, it is meant to become strong and robust. Inertia of the will leads to personal atrophy — becoming a weaker or worse version of who you could be. Good choices, communion and strong relationships stop that from happening. In fact, the reverse happens. Freedom allows one to become freer, able to choose better for the sake of one’s own good and the good of others.

When members of a community are not focused on fostering the individual’s potential for good, however, people drift toward inertia or, worse, poorer choices. They can suffer from loneliness and even despair due to a lack of meaning and purpose in their lives. This does not mean that every conversation people have must be about purpose and meaning. It does mean that encouragement, help and kindness could be extremely formative for people in a healthy and positive way. It also means that negativity and discouragement (not the same as truthful criticism) should be avoided. When facing loneliness, the best thing to do is to go outside of oneself, to counteract the loneliness in some way. This is most effective when that going out of oneself contributes in some way, however small, to the well-being of another.

Living for Others

Going back to the choices the individual makes about personal integrity, the choices that each one makes about identity, meaning and purpose — while having a huge impact on the individual — have an enormous impact on others. Integral, virtuous people become the “salt of the earth” and the “city set on a hill.” We can become like lights in the darkness for those who are lost. For those suffering from loneliness and a lack of communion, the help of a few good people can make a life-changing difference.

How does someone make choices toward personal transformation and friendship? Remember always to seek what is good, the true good, for oneself and for others. To desire good to someone for his or her own sake, not one’s own, is the definition of love. This means that the other is never a means to an end. One does not use another for the sake of obtaining some other good — not in small ways, not in big ways. Instead, love and friendship are focused on the virtuous development of both people. This may mean that fewer people are real friends, but so be it. We should not waste time being a user or being used.

Perhaps a little remedial work is needed before a person is capable of being able to will another’s good — because to do so requires a certain understanding of one’s self as good — and then extending that benevolence to others. Perhaps a person is not good — where should she start? Identify one area to improve, and start there. Break it down into smaller and smaller pieces if necessary. Let yourself be different, which means, if you do improve, embrace it and love yourself for doing so! All of this is the grace of God transforming and shaping the human heart. Let us be grateful for his calling forth the best part of ourselves, for our own fulfillment and the communion he creates among us.

Sister Anna Marie McGuan, R.S.M., is Director of Christian Formation in the Diocese of Knoxville.

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4 min read

Culture

What Is Secularism?

Carl E. Olson

April 11, 2019 8:57 am April 11, 2019

4 min read

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4 min read

Catholics — especially those engaged in apologetics, evangelization and catechesis — hear a lot about secularism. There is the challenge of secularism, the spread of secularism, and the dangers of…

Catholics — especially those engaged in apologetics, evangelization and catechesis — hear a lot about secularism.

There is the challenge of secularism, the spread of secularism, and the dangers of secularism. But what is secularism? If you had to sum up secularism in a single sentence, how would you define it? What are the essential features of secularism?

That’s asking quite a bit, especially when I won’t be able to fully answer those questions in a single column, let alone a sentence. In offering three brief observations about the nature of secularism, I will draw on the thought of three men: a Catholic philosopher, a Calvinist professor and a Russian Orthodox priest.

Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher whose 2007 book “A Secular Age” has been widely praised for its thought-provoking insights into secularism. Taylor is especially keen to challenge the “secularization theory” — the belief that as modernity and science spread, religious belief will decrease, eventually becoming either rare or extinct. This is a presuppositon of most so-called new atheists, who pit science against religion and reason against faith. This leads to secularism being understood as the absence of belief in God. Taylor, however, distinguishes between three sorts of “secular.” The first is the classical understanding, referring to the earthly, temporal order. The second is the widely accepted notion of the absence of religious belief and participation. The third is Taylor’s definition of secularism being “a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace.” This is unique to the modern era of human history, for people are now able to embrace “a purely self-sufficient humanism” aimed as material flourishing, without consideration of a transcedent order and reality.

James K.A. Smith is a professor of philosphy at Calvin College whose book “How (Not) to Be Secular” (2014) is a sort of CliffsNotes version of Taylor’s book. Smith, like Taylor, points out that “secular fundamentalists” often act as if their confident appeals to science and reason have adequately explained every aspect of reality. This, Smith argues, is only so much “secularist spin” that is, in fact, “the denial of contestability and thus the refusal to recognize secularity.”

Put another way, such secularists have simply created a narrative based on their materialist, scientistic assumptions, but without actually offering either real proof or satisfying explanations for a whole host of things. Among those is the deep sense of unease and malaise people feel or sense because, Smith notes, “our age is haunted,” bringing to mind the stories of Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor. Percy, an agnostic as a youth, once wrote of his conversion to Catholicism: “This life is much too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then be asked what you make of it and have to answer, ‘Scientific humanism.’ That won’t do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore, I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and infinite delight.” Secular humanism simply does not satisfy hungry souls and searching hearts.

Father Alexander Schmemann was one of the greatest Eastern Orthodox thinkers of the past century. My favorite book of his is “For The Life of the World,” written just over 50 years ago, a profound study of worship and sacramentality. In the final chapter, “Worship In a Secular Age,” He states that he thinks most people have missed the essential core — or grave defect — of secularism. “Secularism, I submit, is above all a negation of worship…. If secularism in theological terms is a heresy, it is primarily a heresy about man. It is the negation of man as a worshiping being.” Father Schmemann points out that secularism is not the same as atheism; in fact, secularism does not try to eliminate God as much as completely change man’s relationship with God. Put very simply, God becomes a commodity for our use. Man was made to adore, but has chosen to be autonomous. And now man is haunted, trapped in his secularist cage.

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com) and writes from Oregon.

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5 min read

Culture

Cultures Matter In Catholicism

Bishop Felipe J. Estevez

March 8, 2019 3:52 pm March 8, 2019

5 min read

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5 min read

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke describes the day of Pentecost as an event of universal significance. When the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, the variety of…

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke describes the day of Pentecost as an event of universal significance. When the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, the variety of nations and cultures that heard them speak represented the seeds of the Catholic Church. “We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs” (Acts 2:9-11).

Luke’s incredible list of peoples encompassed the entire known world at the time. From the very beginning of its existence, then, the Church has embraced every human culture with the understanding that all people have souls to save, no matter what race they come from or language they speak. The Gospel message didn’t annihilate those cultures but purified and transformed them into civilizations that reflect the life and love of God more profoundly.

The Second Vatican Council noted, “In virtue of this catholicity [that is, universality] each individual part contributes through its special gifts to the good of the other parts and of the whole Church. Through the common sharing of gifts and through the common effort to attain fullness in unity, the whole and each of the parts receive increase” (Lumen Gentium, No. 13).

In other words, whenever the Church offers the Gospel message to the people of different cultures, both benefit: The Church is enriched as much as the culture that receives the message of salvation. In Catholic terminology we call this process “enculturation,” where the diversity of cultures is incorporated into the Church and the Good News of Jesus Christ is spread more broadly and deeply into human society. This was a theme that both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI emphasized continually in their writings and travels.

I often think of the Pentecost narrative as we debate issues of national significance in our political and social life. If any nation can lay claim to the title of “universal” it is the United States of America. The history and diversity of ethnic groups that form our one nation is simply astounding. Our national motto is “E pluribus unum” (out of many [peoples], one), further underlying the truth that America has in some way always reflected the universality of God’s love for the human race. We are many cultures coming together as one nation united under one constitution.

Americans are accustomed to the venerable analogy of our society as a “melting pot,” which symbolizes a diversity of things being thrown into a container on a fire, melting into one amorphous whole. It is certainly very descriptive, but that analogy seems to entail the loss of the uniqueness of the parts that come together. I have always preferred the image of the “mixed salad” (or perhaps the “patchwork quilt” or “tapestry”) where the individuality of each piece is maintained but brought together to form one beautiful new thing. Nothing is destroyed; rather, the whole is enriched by the diversity of the parts.

If you think that America has not benefitted by the influx of different cultures, just recall the last time you ate pizza, watched Irish dancing or traveled to American cities with foreign names and institutions. So many immigrants have come to America for the freedoms and opportunities we enjoy, and, in return, those different cultures have made many unique contributions to America through which everyone benefits.

I believe that the Catholic Church has had a broad and fruitful mission field in the United States from the beginning precisely because Catholicism finds a natural home in a nation that embraces such cultural diversity. Catholics comprise almost a quarter of the U.S. population today; in our Church every possible ethnic group is represented as a sort of microcosm of the universal Church. In the Diocese of Brooklyn, for example, Mass is celebrated in 33 different languages every Sunday!

There is, however, a tendency in political life — and this is surely evident in American history — for the established society to be threatened by the influx of people from other cultures who bring their differences with them. Yet as Catholics we must keep in mind that our whole national narrative is rooted in this tremendous wealth of people coming together to form one nation under God. We must see and embrace the different cultures like the apostles did on the Day of Pentecost: as a blessing, an opportunity for salvation and mutual enrichment. America provides a unique environment for that blessing to flourish.

Still early on in this new year, with whole new opportunities for evangelization, we must realize that we are all part of the tapestry of this great culture which reflects, in some mysterious way, the universal mission of the Church. We should not be afraid to offer the gift of the Gospel message to others. It is Christ himself we offer, but, as the principles of enculturation show, we also receive so much in return.

Most Rev. Felipe J. Estevez is Bishop of St. Augustine, Florida.

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8 min read

Culture

Meaning In The Mayhem: The Popularity of Horror

Michael Schrauzer

March 1, 2019 10:24 pm March 1, 2019

8 min read

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8 min read

It’s hard to get away from horror these days, on screen or in print. Millions enjoy the gory messes. Millions don’t. But there’s no denying that zombies, vampires, ghosts and…

It’s hard to get away from horror these days, on screen or in print.

Millions enjoy the gory messes. Millions don’t. But there’s no denying that zombies, vampires, ghosts and demons, and their flesh-and-blood allies among the living, the brutal ax murderers, cannibal killers and monsters — terrestrial and extraterrestrial — are practically folk heroes, celebrated and embraced by their legions of fans.

Meaning in the Mayhem

Whether you are amused by these disturbing images and characters or find them, well, horrifying, I’d like to suggest that they are more than simple entertainment on the one hand or, as some might think, deplorable signs of moral decay in our culture on the other. In fact, I think Christians are uniquely positioned to shine a light on the darkness and to discover meaning in the mayhem. It won’t make horror any less horrible, or suddenly make fans of critics, but it will at least show that it has a legitimate place in the Christian imagination; indeed, that may be where the “best” horror comes from.

Now, why would one say that? Well, first, let’s get a handle on what horror is. The word comes from the Latin horrere, meaning to shudder or tremble, either from cold or fear. As an emotion, though, horror is more than simple fear, however extreme. It is fear mingled with disgust and outrage (and often a dash of the uncanny). These additions make all the difference. Lots of things are frightening but not disgusting — a roller-coaster ride, for example. Others are disgusting but not frightening — remember that tub of moldy yogurt on the bottom shelf of your refrigerator?

The outrage in horror is especially important. Gruesome monsters and sadistic murderers are certainly frightening, but behind the fright is the conviction that such things just should not be. Vampires are not only scary, they are wrong. Ghosts are unnatural. Psychopaths are inhuman. Torture, murder and death itself are profoundly outrageous. These horrors violate our deepest intuitions about how the world ought to operate, about good and evil, crime and punishment, and what it means to be human. Encounters with them leave us feeling unsettled and terrified, but underneath it all righteously angry.

Building on Natural Moral Law

In other words, horror builds on the natural moral law that God has written in our hearts. Without that foundation horror would have little to play on: in a godless universe, being eaten alive would be as unpleasant as ever, but you couldn’t protest that it was unfair. As it is, we Christians believe that death, terror and outrage were never part of God’s plan, and that they won’t have any place in the New Jerusalem. At present though, we have to live not only with the horrible scandal of pain and suffering but with the spiritual crises brought on by the forces of materialism and secularism. Horror flourishes in this environment, but it focuses so often on the supernatural realm — or the horror of its absence — because it recognizes that we are spiritual beings who long for spiritual things, and that life without God is hell. We ought to be encouraged if people can still be horrified, because it means they still have some inkling of the paradise God intended His creation to be, and of their own dignity as God’s children.

With or without admitting it openly, nearly all horror tales explore the consequences of ignoring or opposing God’s laws, most obviously those against murder and coveting what doesn’t belong to you (like someone’s life or soul), on up to the big one of adoring God alone. In addition, many of them show (indirectly perhaps) how what is good and beautiful when done in conformity to divine will or the example of Christ becomes nightmarish when God is left out of the picture. This is the tragic history of the human race, of course, which explains why many familiar horror plots are actually twisted takes on biblical events and Christian teachings.

Zombies and vampires, for example, take by violence what Christ freely offers in the holy Eucharist, turning the unbloody Sacrament into a cannibalistic rampage; these once-human creatures prefer a self-obsessed, cadaverous half-existence to the fullness of life in Christ. Animal/human hybrids, Frankensteinian experiments, clones, mutants and out-of-control “Terminator” robots illustrate the disasters that follow when humans grasp at God’s power over life and death. Christians know that life is more than the physical body, and that submission to sacramental death in baptism is the only path to immortality.

In a way, many of these horrors are examples of hypocrisy, arguably the sin Jesus hated above all others. Like the scribes and Pharisees who hid their corruption behind a façade of righteousness, notorious villains such as Norman Bates or Hannibal Lector are “whitened sepulchers” whose ordinary human appearance masks a monstrous interior. Aliens and devils also frequently disguise themselves with a human shape (though more than a few aren’t shy about showing off their true colors); the shudder of loathing comes when the hypocrisy is exposed, when what we had thought was good and human is found to be something else. But consider: To the extent that we are sinners, we are all like them, bearing the likeness of God, but full of wickedness. At Halloween we let those inner monsters out to play, but without divine grace and the forgiveness of sins we would be the real walking dead.

Sin Is the True Horror

And that gets us to the nub of the matter: Sin is the true and ultimate horror. What could be more revolting than the destruction of good, more shocking than the annihilation of grace, more hateful than the rejection of God that every sin amounts to? And what could be more terrifying than eternal loss and separation from God? Horror was born in the Garden of Eden and lives on in our every transgression. Perhaps St. Paul had this divine horror in mind when he exhorted the Ephesians not to “grieve the holy Spirit” (4:30).

All this philosophizing about horror is fine as far as it goes, but there’s no getting past the fact that exposing yourself to it at the local multiplex can be a pretty nasty business. Why would anyone choose to inflict it on themselves? That is a question of taste, of course, and we know these questions don’t have easy answers. Some people like horror, some don’t. Certainly, those with sensitive or nervous dispositions are not obliged to put themselves through the emotional disturbance: “viewer discretion is advised.” But what repels them gives fans a presumably entertaining, cathartic thrill, complete with the illusion of imminent danger and the subsequent satisfaction of having faced it and survived. In fairness, however, there are risks. Repeated exposure to cinematic violence has the potential to desensitize the conscience and push unstable minds over the edge. Horror probably tickles something dark and sinister in certain personalities (which those concerned would do well to exorcize). And some works of horror are so extreme and morally revolting that, like pornography, they should never be seen, let alone have been made.

But there are potential benefits, for those who can take it. Genuine works of imaginative and dramatic art, no matter how bloody, from “Oedipus Rex” and “Macbeth” to “The Night of the Living Dead,” serve the valuable purpose of allowing us to examine life’s challenges and unpleasant possibilities before they happen. They especially allow us to confront the grand questions of the meaning and end of life, and the finality of death. Exposure to two hours of fictional horror on a movie screen could leave us better prepared to face real horror when — God forbid — it comes into our lives. Two hours of prayer would be time well spent, too, but if we can look at the terrifying faces of death and remember that Christ is risen, then horror also could become a spiritual exercise. Approached with faith, works of horror, with their vivid depictions of the reality of sin and its consequences, can shock us out of spiritual complacency, and remind us of our need to depend on God no matter what circumstances, the good and the horrible. Because they know what’s at stake, Christians are perhaps in the best position to appreciate horror, and, ironically, to appreciate it without fear. After all, Jesus’ resurrection removed the sting — and the horror — of death and suffering: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna” (Mt 10:28). But His most frequent command was simple: “Be not afraid.”

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24 min read

Culture

Faith and Culture: A Catholic Preoccupation

Bishop Joseph N. Perry

December 10, 2018 4:17 pm December 10, 2018

24 min read

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24 min read

A teenager arguing with her parents, objecting with words like, “Well, everybody’s doing it!” — everybody is equated with the popular culture that sways us to conform. And when mom…

A teenager arguing with her parents, objecting with words like, “Well, everybody’s doing it!” — everybody is equated with the popular culture that sways us to conform. And when mom or dad quips back at their teenager, “Well, not in this house you won’t.” As long as you are under this roof you will … such-and-such.” “Not in this house” registers often as opposition to the culture, a countercultural stance while asserting a higher wisdom, if not practical wisdom — [but] be that parental wisdom, that is perceived to be for the teen’s greater good.

Young Christians are consistently challenged by the values of culture over against the wisdom we find in Gospel preachments and Christian lifestyle in general and Catholic lifestyle in particular. The choices are many and, sometimes, God-awful. No one relishes standing alone without [their] friends who all seem to be part of “everybody’s doin’ it … so it must be okay!” But, if everybody’s doin’ it … it probably means something about it is wrong!

As Christians we live perpetually with this tension. We are in the culture but not of it. Jesus sensed this acutely when, at the Last Supper, he prayed out-loud for his followers — namely, beseeching his Father to preserve and keep safe his disciples from the enticements and persecutions of the world. Jesus reminded his Father that his followers were in the world but not of it.[1]

Christians have always been critiqued as standing apart from the majority. In fact, wisdom has shown over the two millennia of this faith that our genius exists precisely in that we live against the cultural pace. We constantly drive against traffic! When we look like everyone else, talk like everyone else, behave like everyone else, no one can see the unique Christian thread in life and culture. Precisely when we look different, dress and behave differently, even shed our blood on culture’s soil, we are our greatest. How is that for an interesting riddle?

We are not masochists, and we, like everyone else, need to feel we belong. It’s just that Jesus Christ came to this earth with a whole new set of ideas that have set us, unwittingly, apart. If you are going to be a Christian you must resign yourself to living with the tension.

Jesus taught us in the Gospel that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.[2]Our Lord’s teaching implies that there is something on this earth that deserves the seasoning of the Christian lifestyle. Our Lord’s teaching would imply that there is a measure of darkness on this earth that needs the light of Christ that only we disciples can offer.

What is this darkness? What is this bland food of earth needing seasoning we are referring to?

We are faced with a problem in our religious lives when we are bent upon dividing life between the secular and the sacred. Granted, the implications of our democracy giving birth to ideas like privacy and choice and demarcation between the affairs of state and the affairs of religion would guarantee such a problem, making it more arduous to respond to God in all things; to see God present in all things.

Truth be told, we live and move in several different cultures; in other words, the environments of home, community, school, our age group, the club, church and so forth. Each of these communities exercise their pull on us to conform. Each of these communities involves a network of patterns, customs and worldviews to which we, knowingly and unknowingly, subscribe.

I think of the Harley Davidson bikers association, which meets for its convention every several years at the birthplace of their motorcycle in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Literally, thousands of bikers ride into the city for a variety of activities that run the course of a week’s duration. Ordinary citizens freeze when these Philistines ride into the city! You hear the rumbling of the motors of their bikes throughout the city for several days.

Bikers have their culture, be it a subculture of the larger culture. They wear their leather and tattoos and unshaved faces, bandannas around their heads. Their women look like Tarzan’s Jane swung on the back of their bikes. They have peculiar lifestyles and a particular worldview unlike other citizens who are committed to driving cars and SUVs. Theirs is a unique culture. You may or may not have affinity with bikers.

There is the popular culture we often speak of that influences all other cultures we hold membership in. By popular culture I mean that collage of images and the ever-shifting and changing symbols that tell us who we are, what we should think and be and believe, and how we should behave and dress, and what music we should listen to, what make of vehicles we should drive, in order to belong.

I want to address the issue of the popular culture that hovers above our subcultures. The popular culture turns out to be a large issue to wrestle with in terms of Christian culture in general and Catholic culture in particular.

In an increasingly secular society like ours, we are burdened by conflicting loyalties. Patterns of discourse and debate would present almighty God as a threat to human freedom. The Church suffers under similar indictment as it proposes to be a voice of truth. Indeed, the Gospel of Jesus Christ brought new ideas to challenge human ideas about life and liberty, right and wrong.

The Church’s Magisterium[3] is given the task of pronouncing on moral and religious truth, insofar as truth can be grasped in the present, for the sake of preparing this world for the Second Coming of the Lord, when he will judge the heavens and the earth and all who have walked the earth. But, pronouncing on truth is not done in a vacuum. Its normative source is the revelation that is proclaimed from the written Word of God and the Church’s constant tradition in the areas of faith, doctrine and morals.

But, modernity wrestles with God … I suppose we always have. Scholasticism sets forth the logic of the natural law and the moral law, again stemming from revelation, which are underpinnings of Catholic faith/Catholic thought.

The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) put forth a God being killed so that we could, at last, be free. Some of us remember the Death of God theories that were propounded in the 1950s and 1960s. And in popular literature and film, God is seen as a figure of the macabre or some imaginative being from Aesop’s fairy tales — or from the realms of sci-fi fantasy where God is always warring with Satan — the Evil One — the latter who ends up, actually, the more impressive celebrity for film and media. In our day it is the devil who wins the Oscars.

For the rest of us who try to avoid the headaches involved in thinking about God, it is life’s distractions which prevent us from soaking in the God of Revelation. We leave God to the shelf of intellectual curiosity or merely a name that appears in a book we call the Bible or the poetry of hymns in Church on Sunday if we manage to get there through the press of personal and family events. God amounts to a neat idea but not terribly planted in the humus of our lives.

For these reasons, friends, we fast and pray

We work eight days a week! The good life, critiqued as materialism, consumerism and the stock market, arises among the largest images of modern life in America that would save us from the strains of mere survival … a kind of civil religion these are. Numbers attending the football stadium, basketball court, baseball stadium and the modern airport outrank the Sunday worshiping assembly … telltale indications of where popular American priorities are found.

Connected with popular lingering suspicions about most manifestations of authority, in a free society, is a lingering cynicism and resistance to teaching and direction and the notion that there are certain clear truths as guideposts to life. Unfortunately, certain figures of authority, civic and religious, have lost credibility by their own inability to live up to the values they represent. In the societal crisis it is none too easy to perceive God’s abiding presence in life or the normative place of religion in life. But we move on. The Church will survive despite us.

In its more exaggerated manifestations we don’t need religion to survive in America. In popular culture we dismiss religious perspective to people who are odd or to old ladies. Needing something to point to for an excuse for our behavior, historians say much of these secular thought patterns are fed by the Reformation and the Enlightenment.[4]

So, not surprisingly, we deny the possibility of prayer in schools, at sports events and commencement exercises. We refuse the Ten Commandments displayed in our halls of justice. The president of the United States taking his oath to uphold the Constitution while placing his hand on the Bible is one last vestige of cultural religious praxis in this country — hold your breath — yet to be challenged by someone who finds religion an interference in public life. We find it suspect that the president of our United States or any judge on the bench, let alone the mayor of a city, would be simultaneously a conscientious and practicing Christian beyond showing up before the cameras in some church on Christmas or at someone’s funeral.

For these reasons we fast and pray.

Witness the concerted campaign to force the Catholic Church out of the health care industry. Local politicians are agitating for a withdrawal of government funding from our hospitals and health care facilities because we refuse the practices of sterilization, abortion, euthanasia and the passing out of contraceptives to patients. In this climate Planned Parenthood facilities emerge as the secular chapels of modern-day American life.

The religion of the day is freedom-of-choice/pro-choice. The abortion debate is one symbol of the popular belief that God intrudes on our lives, that our ideas improve on God’s ideas. Personal experience has become the foundation for moral judgment, not the Ten Commandments. Popular culture resists certain immutable, universal truths. Anything is all right as long as you determine it is right, as long as it serves you and your needs … the old moral one-size-fits-all constraints are out-of-date.

Call it the liberal agenda. Call it freedom gone amuck. To some extent we are all liberals because our civic dogma — our civic religion — is freedom; a freedom some others in places around the globe don’t have and cannot imagine.

There are perceptively certain consequences following upon our American interpretation of freedom; moral relativism pollutes the air, giving rise to the current moral crisis we are trying desperately to fix.

Popular culture relishes wide debate and tolerance of a variety of views believing this is the healthy way of surfacing values in a civilized society. We are hesitant about any religious grounding of values lest freedom be curtailed: “My views are as good as your views regardless what we view.”

Freedom of this type guarantees that we are going to bump into one another in conflict over what I perceive I am free to think and free to do. Most aspects of American life are exercised through the arena of conflict … politics, economics, the media, the legal system are all premised upon conflict. And we would bring conflict inside the halls of the Church in a variety of ecclesiologies that leave no one satisfied as to the direction and order of Church life and ministry. Faced with the constitutional construct of the Church from its scriptural foundations, popular dissent sets forth that the Church must change if it is not to our liking … not how I must change in order to be an authentic disciple of Jesus Christ.

Thus the press and media are attracted to conflict-ridden agendas that excoriate the pastoral style of this pope, the office of bishop, the role of priest, the male priesthood, the celibate priesthood, the moral discourse of the Church. Press and media urge an accommodation of religion with the popular culture. Otherwise, the headlines portray that religion amounts to an annoyance in public affairs and the realms of privacy. And the Gospel and its impact on our lives, somehow, gets lost in all this confusion.

For these reasons we fast and pray.

III

When Catholics began arriving on these shores, our faith was seen to be strange and superstitious, if not anti-American. We Catholics have now arrived in American society, the most educated of religious groups. We have made a huge contribution to the fabric of America with our elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, and health care facilities and social outreach. With the exception of most recently arrived immigrants, we have become part of mainstream America. We participate in every strata of society from the trenches of the dirt-poor to the chairs of corporate and financial power. Nevertheless, it was once thought that a Catholic could not participate in the civic and political institutions of this land, until one John F. Kennedy proved them wrong — not without a troublesome statement of defense on his part, however, that he would never allow his faith to influence his protection of the U.S. Constitution. That statement, unfortunately, for whatever was meant by it, has become a mantra for a number of Catholic politicians today who find it no problem to hide their Catholicism in order to throw in their hat with certain morally dubious legislation initiatives.

What this all amounts to is a problem of discipleship — namely, how can Catholic culture survive in an environment where people are caught up with the idea that religion and religious institutions are irrelevant. The situation emerges where we are not sure how or why we are Catholic, or why our Catholic Church is special and more truthful among many others. But then again, our brand of freedom says anything you want to believe or not believe is all right. This is the land of the free.

To speak of the terms faith and culture might immediately indicate that there is a clash or point of disagreement between the two. I suppose this is true in a number of respects such that it is a Catholic preoccupation of sorts. There is a built-in tension between Catholicism and American culture, especially the America of ever-expanding individual rights and freedoms.

A nation which held Catholicism suspect eased up on its anti-Catholicism following the Second Vatican Council’s endorsement of religious liberty and ecumenism.[5] It was thought the Catholic Church had caught up a bit with modern life, at least until 1968, when legislative battles against birth control and abortion found Catholics, once again, battling liberal individualism and became embroiled in internal conflict that has launched a crisis of ideas and preferences. For the first time, Catholics now debate one another in public over contrasting views.

Philip Jenkins, in his book “The New Anti-Catholicism,”[6] comments: “We are submerged in an arena of rigorous debate on just about every issue of social custom and morality. Catholics have always held suspect the liberal emphasis on the autonomy of the person and perennially stressed the common good over individual rights. In the Catholic tradition, the individual is always embedded in social relations within family and community and his or her rights cannot be understood in isolation. … What has changed is not the Catholic Church with its long-held doctrines and practices but America, in which an expansive view of rights has led marginal or persecuted groups to claim their own place in society.”

Today, everyone, conventional and unconventional, is lobbying for constitutional protection for their beliefs and lifestyles.

For these reasons we fast and pray.

While we must be careful about what we soak in from the surrounding culture, we must remember we are both believers and citizens formed and shaped by culture. Our faith asks us to season the culture and enlighten it, not to give up on it or to damn it, but to bring it to God. And, over the course of history, that effort has, in instances, spelled martyrdom.

We are taught one thing here in this sacred place only to go out those doors and find another commentary that would snicker at everything we are and do here.

All the while, the Gospel we hear each week is fond of throwing riddles at us for the sake of a higher wisdom and a higher level of living, such as: loving our enemies,[7] the denunciation of divorce,[8] chaste living regardless of our state in life,[9] celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom,[10] poverty of spirit,[11] lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven,[12] go sell what you have and come follow me.[13] Yes, that young man walked away from Jesus because the popular culture of his day thought it ridiculous not to inhale the riches of this life.

Our Catholicism, precisely, is a daily habit, not a hobby that we have time for this Sunday but maybe not next Sunday, if we happen to have tickets to a football game. Our religion is the organizing force in our lives. For this reason we are called to be salt and light to the culture.[14]

So, with mentionings here of the tensions involved in being Catholic and being citizen, how do we move in the culture?

You are certainly aware of these tensions between culture and belief and their impact on your lives. Despite the secularizing tendencies of our culture, we can navigate the culture by way of a higher consciousness, by way of grace. The interior life — namely, the life of relationship with God and our devotion to family, professional and social life — totally made up of little earthly realities, should not be separated, but can constitute just one existence “holy and full of God.”

This supernatural view of existence opens an extraordinarily rich horizon of salvific perspectives because, in the monotonous context of normal earthly events, God comes close to us and we can actually cooperate in his plan of salvation. Therefore, one can understand with greater ease what the Second Vatican Council affirmed: “The Christian message does not remove men from the construction of the world … but obliges them even more to engage in this as a duty.”[15]

Friends, we cannot separate ourselves from the world within which we live and work. Our recent pontiffs — John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and, more recently, Francis — have all chided us to get into the arena of ideas and debate and exchange with others opposite of our faith and be salt and light to the secular marketplace. Gaudium et Spes is called by some commentators the most important document out of the council, seeing it as a charter which ushered the Catholic Church into dialogue with the modern world. These popes see this engagement synonymous with evangelization of the culture necessary for these times.[16]

The new millennium has signaled a new allegiance to the Church by young Catholics, such as yourselves, who have a hunger for the purity of the Gospel, which contains the credentials of the Church. We are asked to re-evangelize the Church from within and to uphold the truths of the faith and the rightful claims of tradition. We are asked to witness to the truth of the Gospel message.

Some of us gathered here are young families, where love and direction are strident in our households. Most of the rest look forward to establishing their own families some day. How can you improve on the culture, which shapes your attitudes and values, in order to bring it to Christ? How can you be the salt of the earth and the light of the world?[17]

I suggest the evangelization of culture is closely allied with the renewal of family life among Christians — namely, your nurture of your domestic church which serves the Church universal and works an evangelization that is ultimately out of our hands in its results.

No one of us can change the culture single-handedly. The work of changing the culture for Christ is as subtle as the enhancement of food with the season of salt, and is as surprising as the sudden dispelling of the darkness with the sudden dawn of light.

Genuine discipleship nurtures families if children can perceive their mothers and fathers love each other. This alone works psychological health in your children that no school or therapist can provide.

Catholic families can make a difference modeling their families in prayer and worship and highlighting the Church’s liturgical seasons in home exercises and domestic prayer. Teach the faith in your home, reinforce the teaching of the Sunday homily and religious instruction.

Inform the choices of your children by your instruction and example of an authentic Catholic lifestyle. Model for your children an informed and authentic love for holy Church and its representatives.

Teach your children Christian service without them receiving anything in return; this is how Christians behave, for this is the way of the Gospel.

Teach your children to be open and receptive to peoples of other races and backgrounds. Make sure their education and religious formation are gifted by diversity that is a template of the Church at Pentecost[18] and an increasing feature of our modern society.

Read sound Catholic literature that portrays the truths of the faith while exposing us to the ideas of the world that interface with or even conflict with our own.

As a family, live simply and eschew the allures of consumerism and materialism so that you have something to share with others and with the Church.

These action items of family formation raise up discipleship in your children and forges them to be contributing adults to Church and society of the next generation.

The Catholic Church in the immediate future will be carried by young Catholics, like yourselves, who take seriously the call to follow Jesus Christ, who pray, sacrifice, live simply, examine their conscience daily, confess their sins and seek to perfect their lives.

Necessarily, a purified, authentic Catholicism will be represented as a Church of wisdom, of educated and disciplined men and women who seek the truth more than they seek to be right; who think a lot, read a lot, discuss and read and think some more; who share their wisdom as parents, teachers, counselors, confessors and spiritual directors with anyone who cares to enter the discipline of seeking to be wise servants of the truth.

A restoration of Christian family life, a reversal of the tide of broken vows and covenants, a revitalized fidelity to promises we make in life, a renewed allegiance to the Church, will provide us an environment where the work of salt and light can be effective. Seeing God at work in all things, simple and great, is one secret to consecrating the world. You, young families are the key to evangelizing the culture. Know that your serious witness to all things Christian and Catholic is, at once noticed, and truly inspiring.

In Matthew’s Gospel, the 12 disciples asked him why they could not exorcise certain demons they stumbled upon. You remember the Lord’s response: “These kind do not leave except by prayer and fasting” (Mt 17:14-21).

— This homily was originally delivered on Oct. 9, 2017, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., as part of the observances connected to the 25^th International Week of Prayer and Fasting.

Bishop Joseph N. Perry is Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago.

[1] John 17:9-19

[2] Matthew 5:13-16

[3] The teaching office of the bishops, the successors of the apostles. See the Code of Canon Law (1983), canon 330; also the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 891-892.

[4] The Reformation: the religious and social and political upheaval (1517-1648) that divided Western Christendom and created world Protestantism. Its causes were manifold: weakening of papal authority through long residence in France and the worldliness of certain representatives of the Church; intellectual and moral unfitness of certain clergy; ignorance and superstition among the laity; social unrest brought on by the disintegration of the feudal system; support given by political power to dissenters in the church; unrest and secularism brought on by the new geographic discoveries; the use of the printing press to propagate the new views. Christian unity was shattered, personal liberty in religion affected every sphere of human activity, with the rise of the modern secular state, of capitalism as rugged individualism, and with the loss of cultural solidarity founded on a common faith, that had shaped Western civilization for almost a millennium.

The Enlightenment: the title given to the 18th-century because of the prevalent intellectual atmosphere of the time heralded as the Age of Reason; all aspects of learning were given a status that challenged the teachings of Christianity; there was a new emphasis upon humanism, attributing to the social and moral sciences the same exactness found in the natural laws of the physical sciences. This led writers, philosophers and scientists to rationalize concerning religion, ethics and the natural law. This in turn gave rise to secularism and subjective thought that placed the teachings of revealed religion in an outmoded grouping. Human reason became the arbiter of the nature of religion, social sciences, political and economic life.

[5] Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965: Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio; and the Decree on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae; found in The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, SJ, Herder and Herder Association Press, 1966.

[6] Oxford University Press, 2003.

[7] Matthew 5:43-48

[8] Mark 10:1-12

[9] Matthew 5:27-30

[10] Matthew 19:10-12

[11] Matthew 6:24-34

[12] Matthew 6:19-21

[13] Matthew 19:16-30

[14] Matthew 5:13-16

[15] Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World), Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965, n. 34.

[16] Gaudium et Spes, nos. 53-62.

[17] Matthew 5:13-16