In The Economist, Catholicism, and Europe, Samuel Gregg gives that magazine’s coverage of religion qualified praise, as better than usual “though it usually slips in one of the usual secularist bromides, as if to reassure its audiences that it’s keeping a critical distance.”
Its latest article on Catholicism, The Void Within — which R. R. Reno wrote about in Catholicism in Europe — argues that parts of European Catholicism are dying and parts reviving.
Insofar as it goes, that’s a broadly accurate analysis. . . . But what the Economist doesn’t say (though the evidence is there in its own article) is that what we are witnessing is the collapse of “liberal” or “progressivist” Catholicism . . . the policy of gradual accommodation to secularist expectations, and then, inevitably, subservience to secularism.
This kind of Catholicism (I’ve changed the wording slightly, “demands” for “demand,” for example):
(a) demands nothing from its adherents in terms of belief beyond an emphasis on tolerance, diversity, and endless dialogue-for-the-sake-of-dialogue; (b) dilutes dogma and doctrine to the point of meaninglessness; (c) becomes yet another means of self-affirmation in a culture full of self-affirmation; (d) embraces post-1960s sexual morality; (e) essentially anathematizes anyone who doesn’t more-or-less adhere to secular left-liberal political, social, and economic positions.
He’s put this very strongly, but if you dial down the descriptions about 25% to 50% you get a good description of broad generic progressivism. The adherents are expected to believe something about Jesus as a central or crucial figure, for example, but not “dogmatically” and not in a way that claims superiority to any one else’s beliefs, and not in a way that the belief can not be changed through dialogue.
As Gregg notes, “no-one needs to be a Christian to hold these views,” even in what I’ve called the generic progressivist version. Thus “most who embrace these views sooner or later eventually marginalize their Christianity to the point of irrelevance to their daily lives or simply drift away altogether.” And worse, they’re not likely to raise children who believe even that much.
It’s a religion for those who can’t let go. As I’ve put it to “progressive” friends, Protestant and Catholic: If you weren’t used to this religion from growing up with it, would you get out of bed on Sunday morning for it? I can’t imagine very many people would. There’s no cash value to it, no upside, no benefit.
Or, to be fair, not much of one. You might find a small community of like-minded people, a haven in a heartless world of sorts, and you might find a way of ordering your life, at least by setting aside Sunday mornings every week, and you might also find worship that moves you and sermons that help you, even if the God you worshiped were a little ghostly and the sermons a little self-helpish.
That’s something, but it’s not what Christianity offers. You get more out of the full version, it seems to me, for the investment of your Sunday mornings. You get, for example, “Your sins are forgiven,” rather than some version of “Be all you can be.”
August 16th, 2010 | 1:49 am
Hello, Mr. Mills.
Good post. Methinks Christianity needs good teachers of the faith who teach sound/Biblical doctrine. So many churches don’t seem to teach doctrine, or teach at all for that matter. I believe apologetics should be used more, as well, to let the people know and understand their faith isn’t some wishful thinking. IMO, this will help reduce the progressive/post-modern trend in Christianity. I also think younger people, and people in general, should have more respect and training with logic and philosophy (many have little respect for philosophy). After all, this is a philosophical argument and not a scientific one, and many people are simply at the core modernists — if you can’t verify it than it’s not ‘true.’ So for them, philosophical argumentation is void. This needs to be changed.
August 16th, 2010 | 7:17 am
The question is: if your church is devoting hundreds of thousands of dollars to coming up with a new ceremony especially for gay marriage, then does your church qualify as christian anymore?
How progressive does a church have to be before we can confidently say it’s not a real church?
August 16th, 2010 | 11:21 am
I agree with all the above. What I find odd are the number of people who want to carry on calling themselves Christian but who could not recite the Creed and mean it.
Most have gotten rid of such things as the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, his death for our sins, the bodily resurrection. Why do they cling to the label Christian at all? Why do they demand that others continue to call them Christians?
August 16th, 2010 | 1:28 pm
Simon: Why do they cling to the label Christian at all?
That’s an excellent question. I imagine they do it for one of two reasons: (1) To keep peace with their families and friends. Why go through all the messiness of a divorce, if you can avoid it at only a minor cost? (2) To hedge their bets. How, they might think, can one be totally wrong about something so profound?
August 16th, 2010 | 1:38 pm
Simon: why do they cling to the label Christian at all?
One other reason, and perhaps a more basic reason than the others, is that the Faith has a power and an attraction that remains even in the attenuated forms.
For example, you may think that Jesus is just the model for life or the way of salvation or the mythology you find most attractive, but still, you can’t help but feel that He is something special, different, unique. You want to stay closer to Him than your theology requires.
I’m just guessing from the conversation of my “progressive” Christian friends, who are to a man former Evangelicals or Catholics, but I think they want Jesus to give them a lot of rope, but they don’t want to let go of the rope that binds them to Him.
August 16th, 2010 | 6:21 pm
“There is and always has been the Church, and various heresies proceeding from a rejection of some of the Church’s doctrines by men who still desire to retain the rest of her teaching and morals. But there never has been and never can be or will be a general Christian religion professed by men who all accept some central important doctirnes, while agreeing to differ about others. . . .
“There is no essential doctrine such that if we can agree upon it we can differ about the rest: as for instance, to accept immortality but deny the Trinity. A man will call himself a Christian though he denies the unity of the Christian Church; he will call himself a Christian though he denies the presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament; he will cheerfully call himself a Christian though he denies the Incarnation.” Hilaire Belloc: The Great Heresies; 1938
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