Modernity and Catholicism

"Modernity can be defined in many ways:

1. the rise of capitalist democracies in the eighteenth century,
2. the scientific revolution,
3. the divisions of Church and state,
4. the primacy of subjective consciousness (Descartes),
5. skepticism about ultimate metaphysical explanations coupled with 
6. an ethics of autonomy that gives rise to liberal secular culture (Kant),
7. the use of historical studies to relativize all absolute truth claims."

That comes from an interview with Thomas Joseph White o.p. at First Things. I've made it into a numbered list. I've further messed with it by splitting one of his points into two in numbers 5 and 6 above.

The kind of approach Father White thinks Catholics should take to modernity is made clear in something he says immediately after providing these definitions.

What makes these three works modern is that they take seriously and engage directly with the modern problematization of knowledge of absolutes, whether that problematization is metaphysical, historical, or religious. 

The three works he refers to are John Henry Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua, Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange's Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, and Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity. They all do indeed "engage" the modern problematization of knowledge. That said, I don't think Garrigou-Lagrange's work belongs with the other two. He doesn't so much engage modern thought as attempt to obliterate it with a Thomistic hammer. Thomas remains an interesting and important thinker, particularly for what he says about ethics, but his writing on the nature of "reality" is interesting only for historical reasons. The sooner Catholic thinkers stop trying to use his thoughts on "being" the better.

That is a subject for another day perhaps. Others have already dealt with it and I doubt I have anything new to add to the matter. What interests me is that anti-modernist Catholics have felt the need to resist at least some of those seven items listed above ever since the late 19th century. The word "modernism" was coined by Catholics to describe those who would accommodate the faith to some or all of those elements of modernity. Many, many Catholics still carry on the fight.

And we can see an interesting unity that exists between some supposed arch-enemies within the church. We might think, for example, that readers of the National Catholic Reporter and hard-core traditionalist Catholics who read Lifesite News would have nothing in common but both are terrified by the notion that market forces might shape the culture. As a consequence both arch-liberal and arch-traditionalist Catholics tend to want to regulate markets more and more, resist democracy, distrust science*, and want to limit individual autonomy.

I tend to think that Catholicism should accommodate itself to most things on that list. The really problematic issue are #4 and #6 but even they, if properly understood, are different kind of a problems than they initially seem.

One thing I am fairly certain of is that defining "knowledge" is not the solution.




* Liberal Catholics, like liberals in general, will tell you they support science, by which they mean they like to cite it when it supports their beliefs about matters such as climate change. Ask them about evolutionary psychology,  for example, and you'll hear a different tune.