Off the Shelves 2

In our second selection from the Library’s collection we present the conclusion of Fr. Bernard Lonergan’s essay “The Absence of God in Modern Culture” from A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan S.J. edited by William F.J. Ryan SJ and Bernard J. Tyrell SJ (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974)

Today the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme. Whatever is old, is out. Whatever is new, is in. But a mere swing of the pendulum, while it involves plenty of novelty, falls far short of aggiornamento. For aggiornamento is not simple-minded rejection of all that is old and some breezy acceptance of everything new. Rather it is a disengagement from a culture that no longer exists and an involvement in a distinct culture that has replaced it. Christians have been depicted as utterly other-worldly, as idly standing about waiting for the second coming of Christ without any interest or concern or commitment for the things of this life of ours on earth. But the fact of the matter is that the ancient Church set about transforming Greek and Roman culture, that the medieval Church was a principal agent in the formation of medieval culture, that the Renaissance Church was scandalously involved in Renaissance culture. If the modern Church has stood aloof from the modern world, the fact is not too hard to explain. On the one hand, the Church’s involvement in classicist culture was an involvement in a very limited view that totally underestimated the possibilities of cultural change and so precluded advertence to the need for adaptation and zeal to effect it. On the other hand, modern culture with its many excellencies and its unprecedented achievements nonetheless is not just a realm of sweetness and light. The suffering, the sins, the crimes, the destructive power, the sustained blindness of the twentieth century has disenchanted us with progress and made us suspicious of development and advance. Aggiornamento is not desertion of the past but only a discerning and discriminating disengagement from its limitations. Aggiornamento is not just acceptance of the present; it is acknowledgement of its evils as well as of its good; and, as acknowledgement alone is not enough, it also is, by the power of the cross, that meeting of evil with good which transforms evil into good.

Besides its interpretation of man in his world, modern culture transforms man’s control over nature and in consequence involves a reordering of society. The new scene is one of technology, automation, built-in obsolescence, a population explosion, increasing longevity, urbanism, mobility, detached and functional relations between persons, universal, prolonged and continuing education, increasing leisure and travel, instantaneous information, and perpetually available entertainment. In this ever changing scene God, when not totally absent, appears an intruder. To mention him, if not meaningless, seems to be irrelevant. The greatest of financial powers, the power to increase gross national income by taxing and spending for worthy purposes, is restricted to non-religious ends, so that pluralism is given lip-service while secularism is the religion – or, perhaps, the anti-religion – by law established. At the same time, a rigorously codified religious organization finds itself ever less capable of moving with ever fluid situations, to enter meaningfully into people’s lives, significantly to further all good causes, effectively to help the weak, heal the hurt, restore and reinvigorate the disheartened …

Besides a reinterpretation of man in this world, a transformation of man’s control over nature, and consequent reordering society, modern culture has generated a new sense of power and responsibility. Superficially the sense of power might be illustrated by space-exploration, and the sense of responsibility by concern over nuclear bombs. But the matter goes far deeper. Modern culture is the culture that knows about itself and other cultures. It is aware that they are man-made. It is aware that the cultural may sustain or destroy or refashion the social. So it is that modern man not only individually is responsible for the life he leads but also collectively is responsible for the world in which he leads it. So modern culture is culture on the move. It is not dedicated to perpetuating the wisdom of ancestors, to handing on the traditions it has inherited. The past is just the springboard to the future. It is the set of good things to be improved and of evils to be eliminated. The future will belong to those who think about it, who grasp real possibilities, who project a coherent sequence of cumulative realizations, who speak to man’s longing for achievement more wisely than the liberal apostles of automatic progress and more humanly that the liquidating Marxists.

Now this concern with the future of humanity is a concern for humanity in this world; so it has been thought to be purely secular. Such a conclusion is, I believe, mistaken. It is true that concern for the future is incompatible with a blind traditionalism, but a blind traditionalism is not the essence of religion. It is true that concern for the future will work itself out by human means, by drawing on human experience, human intelligence, human judgment, human decision, but again this is quite compatible with a profoundly religious attitude. It was St. Ignatius Loyola who gave the advise: act as though results depended exclusively on you, but await the results as though the depended entirely on God. What is false is that human concern for the future can generate a better future on the basis of individual and group egoism. For to know what is truly good and to effect it calls for a self-transcendence that seeks to benefit not self at the cost of the group, not the group at the cost of mankind, not present mankind at the cost of mankind’s future. Concern for the future, if it is not just high-sounding hypocrisy, supposes rare moral attainment. It calls for what Christians name heroic charity. In the measure that Christians practice and radiate heroic charity they need not fear they will be superfluous either in the task of discerning man’s true good in this life or in the task of bring it about.