Category: Culture

6 min read

Culture

Called to Community

Sister Anna Marie McGuan

November 24, 2022 8:00 am November 24, 2022

6 min read

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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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8 min read

Culture

Meaning In The Mayhem: The Popularity of Horror

Michael Schrauzer

October 25, 2022 10:24 am October 25, 2022

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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3 min read

Culture

Should Catholics celebrate Halloween?

Michael R. Heinlein

August 3, 2022 6:47 am August 3, 2022

3 min read

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3 min read

Because of the concern of many about Halloween’s origins, many Catholic parents wonder if it is OK to let their children celebrate the holiday. Let’s be clear: Halloween can be…

Because of the concern of many about Halloween’s origins, many Catholic parents wonder if it is OK to let their children celebrate the holiday.

Let’s be clear: Halloween can be traced back to pagan roots, with a focus on the occult, and we should not be ignorant of that fact. But certainly, in a Christian context, the holiday effectively has been baptized, as its current name suggests, as the eve of all hallows (an older word referring to saints, referenced in the “halo” saints often are depicted as having on account of their holiness). Halloween falls the day before Catholics celebrate All Saints Day, on Nov. 1. Of course, in American culture, Halloween has taken on a life of its own.

Although Halloween remains associated with the pagan and occult in the minds of many, that does not necessarily mean that Catholics cannot celebrate Halloween as a cultural event.

Americans approach Halloween in a variety of ways. The basic activities associated with the annual fall holiday are carving pumpkins and dressing up in costume for trick-or-treating, neither of which is bad in itself. It can be especially fun to play up the aspects of fall and harvest season, with its omnipresent gourds, decorative corn and dried cornstalks.

Halloween’s spooky aspect should not be overplayed, however, by people of faith. Evil spirits and demons are real and should not be invoked or celebrated. There should be some element of prayer associated with Halloween in Catholic households, especially asking protection for those who will tinker around with the occult. As the traditional Scottish prayer goes:

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-leggedy beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us!

Practically, it is OK for Catholics to go trick-or-treating, always keeping in mind the importance for moderation and avoidance of gluttony, as well as remembering good manners to set an example for others — not least of which should be polite behavior when asking neighbors for free candy! Catholics also can dress up in costume for Halloween, but should keep in mind that it is best to stay away from costumes related to its pagan roots, like goblins, witches or horror film characters. Dressing up as something milder, like one’s favorite sports player, cartoon character or superhero, is a better approach.

But it might be even better to dress up as our real heroes, the saints. This is a time-honored tradition related with Halloween in which more Catholics could participate. First, it helps teach our children. Why not for Halloween take on the persona of someone we should emulate every other day — one of the saints who shows us how to stay on the path that leads to heaven? Also, it can be a witness to those around us — an everyday, ordinary way to preach without using words. We can make use of Halloween, as we should all things, to evangelize.

Michael R. Heinlein is editor of Simply Catholic. Follow him on Twitter@HeinleinMichael.

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5 min read

Culture

Cultures Matter In Catholicism

Bishop Felipe J. Estevez

April 3, 2022 7:59 am April 3, 2022

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.

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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5 min read

Culture

Truth and Truthfulness

Sister Anna Marie McGuan

February 5, 2022 10:17 pm February 5, 2022

5 min read

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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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4 min read

Culture

What Is Secularism?

Carl E. Olson

September 28, 2020 8:57 am September 28, 2020

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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