You understand absolutely nothing about modern civilization unless you first admit that it is a universal conspiracy against all interior life.
—Georges Bernanos, La France contre les robots
NICOLAS DIAT: Some thinkers maintain that the Church must now confront the conjunction of two challenges: the atheism of Enlightenment philosophy and the moral liberalism resulting from the social revolution in the 1960s. What is your judgment on what the philosopher Alberto Methol Ferré, a friend of Pope Francis, called libertine atheism?
ROBERT CARDINAL SARAH: Today the West lives as if God did not exist. How could countries with ancient Christian and spiritual traditions cut themselves off from their roots to such an extent? The consequences appear to be so tragic that it is essential to understand the origin of this phenomenon.
The West decided to distance itself from the Christian faith under the influence of the Enlightenment philosophers and the resulting political currents. Although Christian communities exist that are still vital and missionary, most Western populations now regard Jesus as a sort of idea but not as an event, much less as a person whom the apostles and many witnesses of the Gospel met and loved and to whom they consecrated their whole life.
This estrangement from God is not caused by reasoning but by a wish to be detached from him. The atheistic orientation of a life is almost always a decision by the will. Man no longer wishes to reflect on his relationship to God because he himself intends to become God. His model is Prometheus, the mythological character of the race of Titans who stole sacred fire so as to give it to men; the individual has embarked on a strategy of appropriating God instead of adoring him. Before the so-called “Enlightenment” movement, if a man ever tried to take God’s place, to be his equal, or to eliminate him, these were isolated individual phenomena.
Atheism has its principal origin in the heightened individualism of European man. The individual-king, who aspires more and more to a sort of absolute autonomy or independence, tends to forget God. On the moral level, this search for absolute liberty implies the gradual, indiscriminate rejection of ethical rules and principles. The individualist universe comes to be centered solely on the person, who no longer tolerates any constraint. Hence God is considered someone who creates obstacles to confine our will by imposing laws; God becomes the enemy of autonomy and liberty. Wishing to be totally free, man refuses to accept what he considers to be constraints and even goes so far as to reject any form of dependence on God. He rejects the authority of God, who nevertheless created us free so that, by the reasonable exercise of our freedom, we might go beyond our wild impulses and tame all our instincts by taking full responsibility for our life and growth.
Atheism is thus a decision to ignore reason, which would bring us back to our Creator, the true light that should enlighten us, guide us, and show us the paths of life. In keeping with this logic, some philosophers speak about God no longer as a Father but as a great architect of the universe.
The rejection of God is situated in a movement of scientific and technological conquest that characterized Europe in the early eighteenth century. Man intends to dominate nature and to assert his independence. Technology gives him the impression that he is master of the world. He therefore becomes the sole ruler in a realm without God. Science, however, should not separate man from God. On the contrary, it should bring man closer to divine love.
Of course, the great mystery of evil can drive some persons to doubt and atheism. Indeed, if God is our Father, how can he allow so many innocent persons to suffer? There is no need to insist on the unfathomable quantity of evils with which mankind is afflicted. In Africa we have, unfortunately, paid a heavy tribute to wars, famines, and epidemics. At Cor unum, I witnessed many sufferings that we try to alleviate with means that are ridiculous in comparison with the extent of the needs.
I will never be able to forget the work that we accomplished in Haiti. How could God allow people who were already so poor, deprived of everything, to suffer one misfortune after another, like the gigantic earthquake in 2010, followed by floods and epidemics? How could I ever erase from my memory the refugee camps in Jordan and the faces of so many women who had lost their husbands, their houses, their belongings? They had to take care of their children, who because of the hardships were emotionally unstable and increasingly needy.
The question of evil, which goes down through the ages, remains the same: How can God allow such horrible trials and sufferings to be imposed on innocent victims? In this regard I like to cite Albert Camus. As a philosopher, he looked for reasonable certitudes by which to live. He saw faith as a “leap into the irrational” that turns the mind away from reality, in which man denies his faculty of reason, his “lucid awareness”. But what solidified the thinker’s atheistic position even more was the existence of evil, which he, like the Enlightenment philosophers, could not associate with the divine omnipotence and wisdom. He was unable to accept “the paradox of a God who was almighty and maleficent, or beneficent and sterile”, as he describes it in L’Homme révolté.1 How can you believe in God when innocent children are suffering?
However, we do not know to what extent we cause most of the evils on this earth. How many wars and slaughters could have been avoided? Very often Western countries, who boast of being architects and promoters of peace, are the chief producers or the main traffickers of weapons of mass destruction. With cynical hypocrisy, they sell them to the poor nations and exchange them for their mineral or petroleum resources. The world today is rife with hatred, violence, and barbarism, and many innocent people pay dearly because of those who hold power.
Look at the chaos and disaster in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali. . . Angola went through thirty long years of a similar situation. But in vast regions of the world, suffering has not made people lose their faith. On the contrary, God is a light that permits people who no longer have anything to continue to hope. I recall also the peaceful faces and the serene voices of the Filipinos who confided to me in 2013: “Typhoon Haiyan leveled everything, destroyed everything in its path, except our faith, which remains firmly planted like a rock in the middle of a turbulent sea!”
The brutal statements of Nietzsche in The Gay Science sum up the problem of atheism that I have just described. He sets a scene in which a madman goes through the city in broad daylight, with a lantern in his hand, shouting: “I seek God!. . . Where is God gone?. . . I mean to tell you! We have killed him,—you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move?. . . Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction?—for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!” And Friedrich Nietzsche finishes his account by writing: “It is further stated that the madman made his way into different churches on the same day, and there intoned his Requiem aeternam deo. When led out and called to account, he always gave the reply: ‘What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and monuments of God?’ ”2
Since we claim to have celebrated God’s funeral, how can we be surprised that a godless world has become a hell on earth? Morality, love, freedom, technology, and science are nothing without God’s presence. Man can devise the most magnificent works, but they will be mere sand castles and shifting illusions unless they are related to God. Nietzsche was twenty years old when he wrote his poem to the unknown God: “I want to know you, Unknown One, you who have reached deep within my soul. . . .”
In your reflection you seem to infer that atheistic philosophy is by nature militant and combative. . . .
Today, in the rich and powerful countries, the eclipse of God leads man toward practical materialism, disorderly or abusive consumption, and the creation of false moral norms. Material well-being and immediate satisfaction become the only reason for living. At the end of this process, it is no longer even about fighting God; Christ and the Father are ignored. The reason for this is obvious: God no longer interests anyone. He is dead, and his departure leaves us indifferent. We have passed from atheistic materialism to fluid “New Age” thinking. Those in control of this world no longer think that they have to fight; they have reached another stage that consists essentially of creating the new man. Some researchers even speak about “transhuman-ism”, a technological process that would go “beyond” man the human being. What a proud illusion!
For the Church and for Christians, the danger therefore becomes still more menacing. Western man seems to have made up his mind; he has liberated himself from God; he lives without God. The new rule is to forget heaven so that man might be fully free and autonomous. But the death of God results in the burial of good, beauty, love, and truth; if the source no longer flows, if even that water is transformed by the mud of indifference, man collapses. Good becomes evil, beauty is ugly, love becomes the satisfaction of several primal sexual instincts, and truths are all relative. We should not be surprised, therefore, Benedict XVI said in 2008 in a Letter to the Diocese of Rome, that today we have doubts “about the value of the human person, about the very meaning of truth and good, and ultimately about the goodness of life”.
Modern atheism, the heir to an aggressive movement against God and Christianity, now seeks to ignore God so as to make the world ignorant of him. The laws of the Father, the message of the Gospel are hidden beneath mountains of clever tricks cynically designed to stupefy man. With consummate hypocrisy, the same ones who try to turn man away from his Creator arrogantly say: God does not care about our sufferings; he is absent; this earth is a valley of tears where each one can count only on himself. . . .
Whether it is militant or still in the larval state, atheism always leads to the same consequences. Man is treated as an object, cut off from his spiritual roots and blinded by the artificial lights of material goods or achievements. Finally, all atheism seeks to change the very nature of man. The persecutions are no longer the ones in the concentration camps of the formerly Communist countries, those horrible prisons where my predecessor in Conakry, Archbishop Tchidimbo, had been isolated, tortured, and humiliated, not even having the right to celebrate Mass during the first five years of his detention. Now the persecution has acquired greater subtlety.
In the postmodern world, God has become a superfluous hypothesis, more and more detached from the different spheres of life. I think that people who want to keep the presence of God in their lives must be aware of the subtleties that can easily lead them toward practical atheism and the loss of the salt of faith; they, too, could become like the pagans of yore, those men “having no hope and without God in the world” described by Saint Paul for the Christians of Ephesus (Eph 2:12). Today we cannot be unaware of the way in which God is systematically cast back into the darkness; anaesthetized, men board a ship that leads them ever farther away from heaven.
The best example of the disappearance of the head-on battles of the past is still the Russian Orthodox Church. After so much violence, so much destruction, it is now at the center of the debates. Reversing the movement of insidious atheism that has carried off practically all of Western Europe, Orthodoxy has allowed the Russian nation to avoid the traps, so that now it is a country that makes significant room for God and faith.
Confronted with all these difficulties, it is necessary to return to the foundations of Christian hope and to declare that life on this earth is only part of our existence, which will be prolonged and completed in eternity. In season and out of season, the Church must recall that life cannot be summed up in terms of the satisfaction of material pleasures, without moral rules. At the end of a journey without God there is only the unhappiness of a child deprived of his parents. Yes, hope abides in God alone!
In an age when relativity is the rule, how can the Church still make comprehensible the dogmas that are one of her most important foundations?
Subjectivism is one of the most significant traits of our time. Feelings and personal desires are the only norm. Often modern man regards traditional values as archaeological artifacts.
Since the social revolution in the sixties and seventies, it has been common practice to pit individual liberty against authority. Within this context, even among the faithful, it may seem that personal experience becomes more important than the rules established by the Church. If the individual is the central point of reference, everyone can interpret the Church’s message in his own way, adapting it to his own ideas. I regret that many Christians allow themselves to be influenced by this pervasive individualism; they may sometimes have difficulty feeling at home within the Catholic Church, in her traditional forms, with her dogmas and teachings, her laws, exhortations, and Magisterium. Of course, the disparity is even more significant with respect to moral questions.
Consequently, it is not inaccurate to say that there is a sort of rejection of the dogmas of the Church or a growing distance between people, the faithful, and the dogmas. On the question of marriage, there is a gulf between some people and the Church. The question, therefore, becomes quite simple: Must the world change its attitude, or must the Church change her fidelity to God? Can the distance between these two realities be maintained over time, at the risk of seeing the misunderstandings deepen? For if the faithful still love the Church and the pope but do not put doctrine into practice and change nothing in their lives, even after coming to Rome to hear the successor of Peter, what sort of future can we envisage?
Many of the faithful rejoice to hear talk about divine mercy, and they hope that the radical demands of the Gospel can be relaxed even for the benefit of those who by their lives have chosen to break away from the crucified love of Jesus. They do not appreciate the price paid by him on the Cross, which delivered every one of us from the yoke of sin and death. They think that because of the Lord’s infinite goodness everything is possible, while at the same time deciding to change nothing in their lives. Many expect, as something normal, that God should pour out his mercy on them while they remain in sin. . . .
But sin destroys me: How can the energies of divine life be grafted onto nothingness? Despite the repeated appeals of Saint Paul, they cannot imagine why light and darkness cannot coexist: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?. . . What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” (Rom 6:1-3, 15).
This confusion calls for rapid responses. The Church can no longer go on as though the reality did not exist; she can no longer be content with ephemeral enthusiasm that lasts for the duration of major meetings or liturgical gatherings, as beautiful and rich as they may be. We cannot long do without practical reflection on subjectivism as the root of most contemporary errors. What good is it to know that the pope’s Twitter account is followed by thousands if people do not change their lives concretely? What good is it to compile amazing statistics about the crowds that throng to see the popes if we are not sure that their conversions are real and deep and if we do not know whether Jesus and his Gospel are the reference point and guide of our faithful? That being said, the World Youth Days have also made possible some beautiful and generous responses to God’s call.
Given the wave of subjectivism that seems to be sweeping everyone away, men of the Church must beware of denying reality by becoming inebriated with deceptive appearances and glory. Certainly, some events can prompt interior changes and genuine conversions. For example, I am sure that the funeral of John Paul II and the ceremonies for his canonization, at the same time as that of John XXIII, gave great impetus to many Catholics; that immense crowd gathered around the Lord’s altar managed to deepen the message of Karol Wojtyła and the universal call to holiness voiced by the Second Vatican Council, which the two popes embodied in their everyday lives. In order to start a concrete, radical change in people’s lives, the teaching of Jesus and of the Church must reach human hearts. Two millennia ago, the apostles followed Christ. They left everything, and their lives were never again the same. The path taken by the apostles is still a model today.
The Church has to rediscover a vision. If her teaching is not understood, she must not be afraid to go back to the drawing board a hundred times. This is not about relaxing the requirements of the Gospel or changing the doctrine of Jesus and the apostles to adapt to fleeting fashions but, rather, about challenging ourselves radically with regard to how we ourselves live the Gospel of Jesus and present dogma.
The lack of comprehension seems to reach the level where even the philosophical heritage of Christianity is denied. For example, few thinkers recall the Church’s fundamental contribution to the establishment of humanism. In addition, are we not witnessing now the emergence of a humanism that no longer knows Christ?
Yes, indeed, the Christian religion put man at the center of all its concerns, unlike the pagan beliefs that preceded it. The hope for salvation proclaimed by Christ is addressed to all mankind. But only Christ Jesus, the God-man, fully manifests man to himself and reveals to him the sublimity of his vocation. And if it is true that Christ fully reveals man, then it is also fair to say that if we reject Christ, or if we obscure his face, the consequences appear a hundredfold in our confusion about what man is.
Sin blurs man’s face. Now Christ came not only to save mankind but also to repair what sin had broken, to snatch man away from everything that disfigures him, so as to restore to human destiny all its breadth and fulfillment.
Following Saint Irenaeus and Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, Saint Thomas Aquinas states that the only Son of God assumed our nature in order to divinize men. Athanasius says “in order to make us God”. A contrario, Enlightenment philosophy wanted to de-Christianize humanism. But the moment God is no longer creator, man is debased. In Genesis it says that God has a plan for man, to which the latter must be faithful. If man tries to liberate himself from God, he loses his trinitarian structure and becomes dehumanized. Humanism that tries to ignore Christ empties out its own substance and becomes merely materialism.
By preserving a few meager spiritual roots, materialism can sometimes create an illusion. But it no longer has anything in common with humanism that is shaped by Christianity, which is absolutely centered on the face of man, the unique reflection of God. Without a true humanism founded on Christ, man no longer understands himself. He cannot even love truly, or if he does love, he will do so with a lot of selfishness and difficulty.
In order for man to be fully actualized, he is, so to speak, ontologically connected to God by Jesus Christ. There is a vital relation with God. It is impossible from now on to separate man from Jesus, the God-man; this prompted Paul VI to say at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council that the path to God goes by way of man. The discovery of God goes by way of the discovery of man. The service of God goes by way of the service of man.
What do you mean by “the trinitarian structure” of man?
How do we describe the Trinity? One God in three Persons. The Son is from the Father, and the Spirit is with the Father and the Son; he is the Vinculum caritatis between the Father and the Son, the bond of love between the Father and the Son. The Trinity is a communion of knowledge and love. Strictly speaking, man is a relational being. He is driven toward God and toward other men. If man loses this orientation, he has nothing left but to look at himself perpetually, and this egotism can take different forms.
Apart from his trinitarian nature, in which he fully actualizes his vocation to be united to God, man becomes closed in on himself. Another person becomes a problem and is no longer an extension of himself. The abandonment of the Trinity is taken to its ultimate consequences when man seeks to divinize his own nature, in a passionate, desperate quest for himself, far from Jesus Christ.
Saint Irenaeus, in his treatise Against Heresies (Contra haereses), develops a Christian anthropology close to Saint Paul’s. We find in it, as though reflected in a mirror, the divine plan to remake man in his own image. For Irenaeus of Lyons, man is modeled by the Holy Spirit in the divine likeness: “At present we receive a share in the Spirit who perfects us and prepares us for incorruptibility and little by little accustoms us to receive God.” Christ is the Archetype of the new man. And so Irenaeus can write: “Life in man is the glory of God; the life of man is the vision of God. If the revelation of God through creation gives life to all who live upon the earth, much more does the manifestation of the Father through the Word give life to those who see God.”
In separating himself from the Triune God, man forgets the true order of things, for God became man so that man might become God. Indeed, the elimination of God causes great violence. Without the Father, man finds himself dependent exclusively on little personal deals, which lead to great loneliness. Without Christ, man becomes a wolf to his fellow-man, and he no longer can love as Jesus does. Without the Spirit, man’s intellect increasingly contemplates itself and finally goes into decline; with the Spirit, reason functions in hope and joy.
Benedict XVI called unceasingly for a productive dialogue between fides and ratio, faith and reason. Today most philosophical reflection seems to be cut off from all transcendence. What do you think of this development?
The encounter between Greek philosophy and Christianity was a unique moment in the history of mankind. This powerful dialogue was willed by God.
How can we define philosophy? I think that it is not solely about love of wisdom but, above all, an incessant search by the human intellect for the truth and for a contemplative knowledge of the deeper causes of things. This search went aground on many reefs, and it was consolidated with Socrates and reached a very high level with Plato and Aristotle.
Through its encounter with the Christian faith, with Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and others, the human intellect shaped by nonChristian thinkers no longer loves natural wisdom alone but loves eternal wisdom, wisdom incarnate, Christ, who declared, “I am the Truth.” Thus Greek philosophy receives Christian baptism and is purified so as to become within the Church the servant of theology.
There is no disputing the fact that Saint Thomas Aquinas was the man who gave his life to prepare the way for this providential encounter. He is the one who witnesses and blesses the exchange of consent at the marriage of Greek wisdom and eternal wisdom. . . .
At the end of a long, fine, honest, and patient search, the Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, understood the essence of nature, of matter, of life, and of the spirit. Despite the perfection of the thought that he was able to elaborate, with an ordered vision of the universe and of man, Aristotle, who played one of the greatest roles in the history of philosophical reflection, recognized his limits. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes: “O my friends, no one is a true friend!” This bitter admission could be translated into other terms: “There is no communion!” This is the painful recognition of the fact that man’s thirst is never quenched by the human intellect alone. Philosophy, by itself, is incapable of leading man to his total fulfillment, to his encounter with eternal truth, even though “since the creation of the world [God’s] invisible nature. . . has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom 1:20).
The very idea of a creation “from nothing” never crosses Aristotle’s mind. Thus Greek wisdom brings us very close to the truth. Nevertheless, in its highest expression, it is still far from the concept of a God who would lower himself to deal with man. Philosophical thought still does not understand the foundations of the human person. This ignorance explains its inability to perceive the radical equality of all men and to guess at the ineffable grace of divine adoption, which is supernatural. We all become brethren, not by nature, but by God’s grace. Greek wisdom cannot explain evil or suffering or redemption or hope. Nevertheless, this thirst for divine friendship is still a marvelous attempt and a preparation for revelation, for the Logos.
Even though several passages by Aristotle seemed to depart explicitly from Christian doctrine, and despite all the gaps in Greek wisdom, Saint Thomas Aquinas later tried to understand Aristotle, to receive his thought in order to improve it for the purpose of instruction, because the philosopher’s approach seemed to him to espouse the correct method of seeking the truth. Furthermore, Saint Thomas considered this method a useful instrument with which to study the doctrine of the faith. He did not intend, like other theologians of his era, to reject pagan wisdom because of its shortcomings or its partially erroneous philosophical expressions; instead, he made use of them after purifying them of their pagan overtones. . . .
Earlier, Saint Basil, in his fight against the Greek culture of his time, found himself confronted with a similar task. In his book On the Way to Jesus Christ, Joseph Ratzinger refers to a text by Saint Basil in which he adapts a verse from the Book of the Prophet Amos to the problem of pagan culture. “Then Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees” (Amos 7:14). The Septuagint Greek translation of this prophetic book renders the last expression more concretely as follows: “I was a herdsman who cuts sycamore fruits.” This translation is based on the fact that the fruits of the sycamore tree must be cut before they are harvested, so that they mature after a few days. In his commentary on Isaiah 9:10, Basil presupposes familiarity with this practice when he writes: “The sycamore is a tree that bears very plentiful fruit. But it is tasteless, unless one carefully slits it and allows its sap to run out, whereby it becomes flavourful. That is why, we believe, the sycamore is a symbol of the pagan world: it offers a surplus, yet at the same time it is insipid. This comes from living according to pagan customs. When one manages to slit them by means of the Logos, it [the pagan world] is transformed, becomes tasty and useful.” Applying this reasoning to the contemporary scene, Joseph Ratzinger commented: “The Logos itself must slit our cultures and their fruit, so that what is unusable is purified and becomes not only usable but good. . . . Only the Logos himself can guide our cultures to their true purity and maturity, but the Logos makes us his servants, the ‘dresser of sycamore trees’.”3
This passage symbolizes in a way the role of the Gospel in the forum of culture and philosophical thought. The Gospel is not only focused on the individual; it also irradiates culture by assisting the growth and development of the person, his way of thinking, his productiveness for God and the world. The Gospel is a “slit” or a “cut”, a purification that brings about maturation and healing. Obviously this “cut” is not a momentary matter but a patient encounter between the Logos and the culture.
Today, after such productive encounters as that of ancient Greece and the Gospel, philosophy’s thirst has not been quenched. Philosophy, even without revelation, can achieve transcendence and arrive at God as the Creator and final cause. But the rejection of God once again confines philosophy to questions about matter alone. Jesus Christ, the perfect man, comes to magnify all research into human nature. Why should a thinker want at any cost to commit himself to a sort of regression and to reject a discovery of man? Contemporary philosophy is interested in him in a very superficial way. This new wisdom ultimately touches only on phenomena external to man. Often it is more about sociology than about philosophy! The time has come to restore certain human sciences to their place, has it not?
Let us set aside the cultural question to address politics in the broad sense of the term. Would you say likewise that democracy is an invention of Christianity?
Indisputably. There is a Christian concept of the equality of man. Christ grants equal dignity to everyone; there is no barrier to his salvation. Only Christ guarantees respect for and protection of the fundamental rights of every human person. He alone imposes on every man and every woman the duty to carry out their responsibilities with regard to individual conscience and society, in order to promote justice, liberty, and the common good. Christ places at the heart of societies the primacy of fraternal love and service to others. These are a few elements that must be taken into account in the constitution of a true democracy.
This form of government is not exactly majority rule, but it approximates it. Does a majority still deserve the name when it crushes racial, religious, and political minorities with the help of oppressive laws? In Deus caritas est, Benedict XVI recalled that “the just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics. As Augustine once said, a State which is not governed according to justice would be just a bunch of thieves: ‘Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia?’ ” (DCE 28). Such situations and realities are not uncommon today. It is good for every power to be checked and balanced by other powers. And so democracy, which is an ideal and a practice, is acknowledged as the least bad political system. But if democracy excludes religion, explicitly or not, it is no longer a good for the people; hence the constitutional State no longer is, either.
The Christian message is revolutionary: all men are brothers and have one and the same Father. We are equal in dignity, for we are all created in the image of God. Nevertheless, true democracy cannot be the arbitrary rule of the majority. For is the majority necessarily just? Obviously the answer is no. Sometimes the minorities are the ones who hold the truth. . . .
I am convinced that a democracy that contributes to the integral development of mankind cannot continue without God. When a head of State knows that God is above him, his conscience more easily appeals to him to be a humble servant. Without a Christian reference, in ignorance of God, a democracy becomes a sort of oligarchy, an elitist, inegalitarian regime. As always, the eclipse of what is divine means the debasement of what is human.
On Monday, April 18, 2005, during the Missa pro eligendo Romano Pontifice, a few hours before his election to the throne of Peter, Cardinal Ratzinger had decided to denounce the dictatorship of relativism. You seem to think that the insights of this speech are still quite relevant today.
Yes, and I would like first to cite a long passage from this homily. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger then declared: “How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves—flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what Saint Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4:14) comes true. Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be ‘tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine’, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires. We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism. An ‘adult’ faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from truth. We must develop this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith—only faith—that creates unity and is fulfilled in love. On this theme, Saint Paul offers us as a fundamental formula for Christian existence some beautiful words, in contrast to the continual vicissitudes of those who, like children, are tossed about by the waves: make truth in love. Truth and love coincide in Christ. To the extent that we draw close to Christ, in our own lives too, truth and love are blended. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like ‘a clanging cymbal’ (1 Cor 13:1).”
Today relativism appears to be the philosophical basis for Western democracies that refuse to consider that Christian truth might be superior to any other. They altogether take for granted their denial of Christ’s words: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” (Jn 14:6).
In a relativistic system, all ways are possible, like fragmentary components of the march of progress. The common good, from this perspective, is the product of a continual dialogue of everyone, a meeting of different private opinions, a fraternal Tower of Babel in which everybody has a particle of the truth. Modern relativism goes so far as to claim that it is the embodiment of liberty. In this sense, liberty becomes the aggressive obligation to believe that there is no higher truth; in this new Eden, if man rejects the truth revealed by Christ, he becomes free. Life together in society assumes the form of an impassable horizon within which each individual can control his own moral, philosophical, and religious views. Consequently, relativism drives man to create his own religion, populated by multiple more or less pathetic deities, which are born and die in response to impulses, in a world that is somewhat reminiscent of the ancient pagan religions.
In this totalitarian yoke, the Church loses her absolute character; her dogmas, her teaching, and her sacraments are practically prohibited or else diminished in their rigor and their demands. The Bride of the Son of God is marginalized, in a disdain that engenders hatred of Christianity, because it is a permanent obstacle. The Church becomes one among others, and the final objective of philosophical relativism still is her death by gradual dilution; relativists, along with the prince of this world, impatiently await that great dusk. They work for the coming of the kingdom of darkness.
John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had grasped the importance of the lethal danger of relativistic theories. The declaration Dominus Iesus is largely a response to relativism. In the introduction, which has lost none of its insightful relevance, Joseph Ratzinger correctly wrote: “The Church’s constant missionary proclamation is endangered today by relativistic theories which seek to justify religious pluralism, not only de facto but also de iure (or in principle). As a consequence, it is held that certain truths have been superseded; for example, the definitive and complete character of the revelation of Jesus Christ, the nature of Christian faith as compared with that of belief in other religions, the inspired nature of the books of Sacred Scripture, the personal unity between the Eternal Word and Jesus of Nazareth, the unity of the economy of the Incarnate Word and the Holy Spirit, the unicity and salvific universality of the mystery of Jesus Christ, the universal salvific mediation of the Church, the inseparability—while recognizing the distinction—of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, and the Church, and the subsistence of the one Church of Christ in the Catholic Church. The roots of these problems are to be found in certain presuppositions of both a philosophical and theological nature, which hinder the understanding and acceptance of the revealed truth. Some of these can be mentioned: the conviction of the elusiveness and inexpressibility of divine truth, even by Christian revelation; relativistic attitudes toward truth itself, according to which what is true for some would not be true for others; the radical opposition posited between the logical mentality of the West and the symbolic mentality of the East; the subjectivism which, by regarding reason as the only source of knowledge, becomes incapable of raising its ‘gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being’; the difficulty in understanding and accepting the presence of definitive and eschatological events in history; the metaphysical emptying of the historical incarnation of the Eternal Logos, reduced to a mere appearing of God in history; the eclecticism of those who, in theological research, uncritically absorb ideas from a variety of philosophical and theological contexts without regard for consistency, systematic connection, or compatibility with Christian truth; finally, the tendency to read and to interpret Sacred Scripture outside the Tradition and Magisterium of the Church. On the basis of such presuppositions, which may evince different nuances, certain theological proposals are developed—at times presented as assertions, and at times as hypotheses—in which Christian revelation and the mystery of Jesus Christ and the Church lose their character of absolute truth and salvific universality, or at least shadows of doubt and uncertainty are cast upon them” (DI 4).
Relativism is a widespread evil, and it is not easy to combat it. The task becomes more complex inasmuch as it arbitrarily serves as a sort of charter for a way of communal life. Relativism attempts to complete the process of the social disappearance of God. It guides mankind with an attractive logic that proves to be a perverse totalitarian system. The Church continues today the battle of Benedict XVI against the liquidation of God. And this is a battle on behalf of mankind.
If we follow the reasoning of Benedict XVI, liberty is in danger of being no longer a choice but an obligation, echoing somewhat the words of the French Revolutionary Saint-Just: “No liberty for the enemies of liberty.”
God created man free; the latter has freedom because he comes from God, who is the very source of all liberty. Saint John writes elsewhere: “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (Jn 8:36). A person living in a state of captivity still possesses one treasure that the cruelest dictator cannot take away from him, for God has given every being interior freedom.
But liberty does not consist of emancipation from all limits or norms. Such liberty is a myth. For liberty must always be guided by the truth; it is intrinsically connected to our creaturely nature. The liberty of one individual must, furthermore, take into account that of his neighbor. Today, I think that the liberty of some is being imposed on others. Recently, the great French demonstrations against the distortion of marriage were able to prove that. This false liberty is the extension of a godless egalitarianism.
Man has the right to express himself according to his conscience without being obliged to undergo external pressures. Thus, interior freedom absolutely must be something that is constantly being won and built up. Liberty without truth is deceitful; the absence of a moral connection between liberty and truth can only produce a form of anarchy. Liberty continues to be real when it truly accomplishes the supreme good of human existence, which is to live in the truth of God.
Today all our freedoms are threatened. Economic, political, and media pressures never cease to diminish the connection between liberty and truth. But I think, too, that we must not give up when faced with this daily combat to win our true liberty. For man, shackled and thrown into a prison, whether physical or symbolic, is a free being. In captivity, he has a prodigious power to decide for himself, to choose and to orient his life toward the good. He also has the dizzying ability to love his torturers; this is the ineffable and eternal message of the Gospel. But liberty requires interior discipline, choices and acts of self-denial that lead our life toward whatever disposes us to be at the service of others. This struggle is collective; it is unthinkable to wage a battle alone. Mankind needs the Church and personal and communal prayer in order to be brought to the truth.
The evangelist John expresses this problem perfectly when he writes: “Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ They answered him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham, and have never been in bondage to any one. How is it that you say, “You will be made free”? ’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not continue in the house for ever; the son continues for ever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.’ They answered him, ‘Abraham is our father.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were Abraham’s children, you would do what Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God; this is not what Abraham did. You do the works of your father.’ They said to him, ‘We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me’ ”(Jn 8:31-42).
For his part, Saint Augustine forcefully testifies that what shackles man’s liberty is sin. Liberty is given to us when we have chosen God freely.
Yes, God created man free, endowed with free will. He can choose between good and evil. However, man will be fully himself only by choosing good and by submitting in a filial way to God. But the Father was excluded from this “freedom of the children of God”, as Saint Paul says, by original sin.
I often think of this realistic reflection by Saint Augustine in his treatise on lying: “So great blindness, moreover, has occupied men’s minds, that to them it is too little if we pronounce some lies not to be sins; but they must needs pronounce it to be sin in some things if we refuse to lie.”4
All human life is a struggle against the shackles of evil, against the slavery of sin, in order to regain true freedom.
Clearly Benedict XVI dedicated his pontificate and a large part of his theological work to the dialogue between faith and reason. What is your view today of the importance of that decision?
In fact, Benedict XVI never tired of returning to this major theme, because it seemed to him essential that we be able to understand the sources of our belief. He thought that the true work of a theologian consists of entering into the Word of God so as to seek to grasp it rationally, to the extent possible, and to share it with the utmost clarity with the people of his time. And so the theologian must develop answers to the great questions of mankind. Baptized persons have the duty to believe not only with their heart but also with their intellect. Benedict XVI says that religion should not become self-enclosed, nor should it cut itself off from the help of reason. Likewise, it seemed to him very important not to fall into the trap of those who seek to dissociate reason and faith, following in the wake of Enlightenment philosophy; some people think that reason can only regress when it comes into contact with faith. On the contrary, faith and reason are like two lights that require each other.
Every believer holds in his heart a treasure, and he has the option of deepening his faith also through the intermediary of reason. This marvelous complementarity is a gift of God. Scientific rigor should not discourage Christians at all. For scientific research is always an advance in our understanding of revelation and of the world. The barriers that some have tried to set up between faith and reason are groundless because they are artificial: there can be no contradiction in God.
Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI treated this question in works that are exceptional in the history of the Church. How can we forget John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et ratio, published in September 1998? I never tire of quoting the first lines of this document: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”
Our world, which no longer wants to hear talk about God, even supposing that it no longer needs him, can find great riches in the dialogue between faith and reason. Men will then be able to understand that the finest human intellect is nothing without the light from heaven, of which the Father gives us a spark through faith.
Along these lines, it is still important to meditate on this passage from Fides et ratio: “In my Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, I drew attention to ‘certain fundamental truths of Catholic doctrine which, in the present circumstances, risk being distorted or denied’ (4). In the present Letter, I wish to pursue that reflection by concentrating on the theme of truth itself and on its foundation in relation to faith. For it is undeniable that this time of rapid and complex change can leave especially the younger generation, to whom the future belongs and on whom it depends, with a sense that they have no valid points of reference. The need for a foundation for personal and communal life becomes all the more pressing at a time when we are faced with the patent inadequacy of perspectives in which the ephemeral is affirmed as a value and the possibility of discovering the real meaning of life is cast into doubt. This is why many people stumble through life to the very edge of the abyss without knowing where they are going. At times, this happens because those whose vocation it is to give cultural expression to their thinking no longer look to truth, preferring quick success to the toil of patient enquiry into what makes life worth living. With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation. This is why I have felt both the need and the duty to address this theme so that, on the threshold of the third millennium of the Christian era, humanity may come to a clearer sense of the great resources with which it has been endowed and may commit itself with renewed courage to implement the plan of salvation of which its history is part” (FR 6).
Can scientific research and the Church therefore go in the same direction?
Certainly, since truth is one. In a few cases, some men of the Church may have been imprudent and disrespectful toward scientists. In his address to the participants in the plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 31, 1992, John Paul II clearly acknowledged the errors committed in the case of Galileo. His remarks were even more well-founded because he did not hesitate to emphasize how far Galileo had gone outside his field by confusing, like most of his adversaries, “the scientific approach to natural phenomena and a reflection on nature, of the philosophical order, for which that approach generally calls”. John Paul II explained as follows: “That is why he rejected the suggestion made to him to present the Copernican system as a hypothesis, inasmuch as it had not been confirmed by irrefutable proof. This was, however, a requirement of the experimental method of which he was the inspired founder. Secondly, the geocentric representation of the world was commonly admitted in the culture of the time as fully agreeing with the teaching of the Bible, certain expressions of which, taken literally, seemed to affirm geocentrism. The problem posed by theologians of that age was, therefore, that of the compatibility between heliocentrism and Scripture. Thus the new science, with its methods and the freedom of research that they presupposed, obliged theologians to examine their own criteria of scriptural interpretation. Most of them did not know how to do so. Paradoxically, Galileo, a sincere believer, showed himself to be more perceptive in this regard than the theologians who opposed him. ‘If Scripture cannot err,’ he wrote to Benedetto Castelli, ‘some of its interpreters and commentators can and do so in many ways.’ We also know of his letter to Christine de Lorraine (1615), which is like a short treatise on biblical hermeneutics. . . . The majority of theologians did not recognize the formal distinction between Sacred Scripture and its interpretation, and this led them unduly to transpose into the realm of the doctrine of the faith a question that in fact pertained to scientific investigation.” Benedict XVI, too, discussed Galileo in a major address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005.
Actually, it is not fair to generalize on the basis of a few particular examples. The Church’s fiercest opponents have managed to create a myth, as though she did everything in her power to fight against science! Some powerful media groups are now largely responsible for establishing the image of a backward, obscurantist Church. This is a witch hunt, which is all the more serious because when the Church fights against some research projects—such as human stem cell research, to give a current example—she makes her arguments on the basis of a particularly well-supported ethical system and while taking into account the most recent discoveries.
Indeed, the Church has often been involved in a large number of scientific research projects, either institutionally or else through many researchers, whether Christian or not; her attitude is always motivated by the good of man and the improvement of his living conditions, especially in the field of medicine.
The Church does not want to absolutize scientific findings as though they were new dogmas. There are scientific research projects that pose serious moral dangers for the very future of man and his dignity or for respect for life. The popes, assisted particularly in recent decades by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and by many Catholics throughout the world, work so that governments might set ethical limits to some research programs. The Church must say how far we can go, and science has the obligation to respect the good of the human person; it cannot ruin man’s very being in the name of a boundless march of progress.
Does the Church believe in progress or in hope?
She encourages both. . . . She is in favor of progress if it promotes the real good of mankind; as for hope, it is born of faith: it is, as the poet Péguy said, “faith that loves”.
Indeed, progress is not the same thing as the hope of heaven. The former seems to be attracted to essentially material concerns. Man aspires to have a better life, to rule over nature, to discover more sophisticated technologies, more rapid communications, a more efficient economy. . . . The mistake is to become locked into a materialistic vision and to make progress an absolute. Too often in Western societies, and in many large cities of the world, any spiritual progress that leads to hope is almost forbidden.
Christ alone enables man to realize his full potential. Jesus introduces those who believe in him into the trinitarian communion. True progress allows a human being to come to terms with his origins by rediscovering God; this is the way to the Father. True progress lifts our sights, our efforts, and our hope toward the things of eternity!
Man is not happy when he accumulates material goods; he flourishes if he conforms his whole life to Christ’s teaching. Wealth can lead to solitude and sadness, whereas Christ always gives joy. Progress without God is a false happiness.
Pope Francis thinks that “spiritual destitution” is the greatest tragedy of modern man. In his Lenten message in 2014, he wrote: “No less a concern is moral destitution, which consists in slavery to vice and sin. How much pain is caused in families because one of their members—often a young person—is in thrall to alcohol, drugs, gambling, or pornography! How many people no longer see meaning in life or prospects for the future, how many have lost hope! And how many are plunged into this destitution by unjust social conditions, by unemployment, which takes away their dignity as breadwinners, and by lack of equal access to education and health care. In such cases, moral destitution can be considered impending suicide. This type of destitution, which also causes financial ruin, is invariably linked to the spiritual destitution which we experience when we turn away from God and reject his love. If we think we don’t need God who reaches out to us through Christ, because we believe we can make do on our own, we are headed for a fall. God alone can truly save and free us. The Gospel is the real antidote to spiritual destitution: wherever we go, we are called as Christians to proclaim the liberating news that forgiveness for sins committed is possible, that God is greater than our sinfulness, that he freely loves us at all times and that we were made for communion and eternal life. The Lord asks us to be joyous heralds of this message of mercy and hope! It is thrilling to experience the joy of spreading this good news, sharing the treasure entrusted to us, consoling broken hearts and offering hope to our brothers and sisters experiencing darkness. It means following and imitating Jesus, who sought out the poor and sinners as a shepherd lovingly seeks his lost sheep. In union with Jesus, we can courageously open up new paths of evangelization and human promotion.”
You often denounce the modern drama of fanatical egalitarianism, whether ideological or societal. What do you mean by that?
Soviet Communism showed how possible it was to lead mankind into misery while promising absolute equality. In my country we experienced true hell under Sékou Touré, who claimed to fulfill Marx’s promises with the class struggle. The myth of equality resulted in a bloody dictatorship. God willed that human beings should be complementary so as to aid and support one another mutually. Equality is not God’s creation.
Today gender theory seems to be toying with this same illusory battle for equality. The dream, the illusion, and the artificial paradises very quickly turn into a nightmare. Man and woman form a unity in love; the denial of their differences is a destructive utopia, a deadly impulse born in a world cut off from God.
Egalitarianism is an ideology that thrives when religion is forgotten. All ideologies end up disappearing, like Communism. Thus the fall of ideologies is inevitable inasmuch as they are nothing but mere products of man without God. But at what cost!
In April 2014, Pope Francis denounced the harmful consequences of the egalitarian ideology of gender for the development of children. Speaking to a delegation from the International Catholic Child Bureau, he plainly affirmed, in his characteristically direct language: “the right of children to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity”. He added that “children and young people. . . are not lab specimens! The horrors of the manipulation of education that we experienced in the great genocidal dictatorships of the twentieth century have not disappeared; they have retained a current relevance under various guises and proposals and, with the pretense of modernity, push children and young people to walk on the dictatorial path of ‘only one form of thought’. A little over a week ago a great teacher said to me: ‘At times with these projects—referring to actual educational projects—one doesn’t know whether the child is going to school or to a re-education camp.’ Working for human rights presupposes the vital aim of fostering anthropological formation, of proper knowledge of the reality of the human person, and knowing how to respond to the problems and challenges posed by contemporary culture and the mentality propagated by the mass media. Obviously this does not mean we should take refuge in hidden protected areas that today are unable to foster life, that belong to a past culture. . . No, not this, this is not good. . . We should face the challenges the new culture launches with the positive values of the human person. For you, this means offering your managers and operators continuing formation on the anthropology of the child, because that is where rights and duties have their foundation. It is against this background that educational projects must be planned and developed, mature and adapt to the signs of the times, always respecting the human identity and freedom of conscience.”
And so, when a female advocate of women’s rights, within the very precincts of the United Nations Organization, in October 2014, called on members of Planned Parenthood International to denounce the distribution of outdated contraceptives, which are dangerous to the health, to poor, defenseless African women, she was fully joining the battle of Pope Francis.
In abandoning God, man loses his reason and becomes blind. The ideological search for equality is an unreal path that fuels the worst tragedies.
Do you think therefore that modern man loses himself in deceptive pastimes so as not to face the real problems?
A Godless society, which considers any spiritual questions a dead letter, masks the emptiness of its materialism by killing time so as better to forget eternity. The farther material things extend their influence, the more man takes pleasure in sophisticated, narcissistic, and perverse amusements; the more man forgets God, the more he observes himself. In looking at himself, he sees the deformations and the ugliness that his debauchery has encrusted on his face. Then, to delude himself that he still shines with the original splendor of a creature of God, he puts on his make-up. But the hidden evil is like the glowing coal beneath the ashes.
Without God, man builds his hell on earth. Amusements and pleasures can become a true scourge for the soul when it sinks into pornography, drugs, violence, and all sorts of perversions.
There is great sadness in claiming to want to indulge in limitless pleasures, whereas the most beautiful joy is to remain simply with God, allowing him to clothe us in light and purity.
In his Pensées Blaise Pascal writes about diversions: “When I have set myself now and then to consider the various distractions of men, the toils and dangers to which they expose themselves in the Court or the camp, whence arise so many quarrels and passions, such daring and often such evil exploits, etc., I have discovered that all the misfortunes of men arise from one thing only, that they are unable to stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to dwell with pleasure in his own home, would not leave it for sea-faring or to besiege a city. An office in the army would not be bought so dearly but that it seems insupportable not to stir from the town, and people only seek conversation and amusing games because they cannot remain with pleasure in their own homes. . . [Diversion is something so necessary to men of the world that they are miserable without it.] We seek repose by resistance to obstacles, and so soon as these are surmounted, repose becomes intolerable. For we think either on the miseries we feel or on those we fear. And even when we seem sheltered on all sides, weariness, of its own accord, will spring from the depths of the heart wherein are its natural roots, and fill the soul with its poison. The counsel given to Pyrrhus to take the rest that he was seeking through so many labours, was full of difficulties.”5 “To bid a man live quietly is to bid him live happily. It is to advise him to be in a state perfectly happy, in which he can think at leisure without finding therein a cause of distress. As men who naturally understand their own condition avoid nothing so much as rest, so there is nothing they leave undone in seeking turmoil. So we are wrong in blaming them. Their error does not lie in seeking excitement, if they seek it only as a diversion; the evil is that they seek it as if the possession of the objects of their quest would make them really happy. In this respect it is right to call their quest a vain one. Hence in all this both the censurers and the censured do not understand man’s true nature. [Vanity is the pleasure of making a show to others.]”6
According to the philosopher, since men could not remedy death, misery, and ignorance, they decided that it would make them happy not to think about them at all. This definition of diversion is indeed connected with several of Pascal’s concepts: misery, because one seeks diversions in order to forget it; vanity, because there is no worse proof of vanity than this remedy to human ills; the supreme good, because ignorance of man’s true good is what drives him to pursue illusory goods.
Diversion has a twofold origin. It is reminiscent of Montaigne’s diversion, which consists of the ability to turn one’s thoughts away from the evils that one is suffering so as to endure them better, but it is also inspired by the Augustinian idea that man is capable of excluding his final end and God from his thoughts. Saint Augustine is right: the search for different pleasures is connected to the abandonment of God.
The man who ignores God and turns his own instincts into godlike standards for all things is headed for destruction. Today we are confronted with one of the last stages of the civilization of diversion. The alternative is simple: if mankind reforms itself, it will live, but if its headlong flight persists, civilization will become a hell.
Could you say that a society that rejects God always ends by seeking replacements in various superstitions and magical rites? From your personal experience, are you not acquainted with a traditional society that is still largely built on pagan foundations without Christian hope?
For a long time I have thought that superstition is born of fear and that true serenity comes from God. If we do not know our Father, or if no one has taught us about him, there is a more or less significant situation of anxiety. In order to ease the fear, rituals, beings, or objects are invested with sacred powers. Paganism can occur in traditional societies or in modern countries, but its manifestations remain identical. To curb depression, the ritual becomes a tranquilizer.
In Africa, paganism was often based on animal sacrifices offered to invisible forces or on the veneration of sacred trees and mountains, which were supposed to contain the presence of deities and spirits. Hence cults seek to mitigate the violence of negative forces. But superstition leaves people in anxiety, ignorance, and doubt. In Guinea, I was able to realize that the fear resulting from animism was being transmitted from generation to generation; it had become cultural. And even some Christians, although saved from death and fear by Jesus, had difficulty in freeing themselves from paganism.
The result is an irrational continuum in which society constantly indulges in libations and sacrifices of all sorts in order to appease the spirits. If man becomes open to the knowledge of God, superstition tends to disappear. I am aware that many Christians may remain bound by old fears. Animism, which looks at the world as being ruled by spirits, is still powerful. Some Christians, weakened by a superficial faith, may be tempted to offer pagan sacrifices to the spirits in order to draw down their favors.
The second type of superstition is connected with the abandonment of God. When man turns away from his fundamental roots, it is necessary for him to commend himself to other forces. Paradoxically, modern materialistic societies are based on magical beliefs. Men make false gods for themselves. The search for power without God generates a greater susceptibility to the thirst for liberating illusions. In this context, it is clear that the first words of John Paul II after his election, repeating Jesus’ invitation: “Be not afraid!”, seek to bring man closer to God so as to restore to him his true liberty.
In many of your reflections, you denounce the increase of symbolic or physical violence against Christians. . . .
This is a reality that runs through the whole history of Christianity, starting with Christ himself, from his birth until the day of his crucifixion. The apostles were the victims of serious violence. The Son of God had announced to his disciples that they would never be at peace on this earth. The only way to win this great combat is union with God. Christians will never succeed in overcoming the challenges of the world by appealing to political tools, human rights, or respect for religious liberty. The only true rock for the baptized is prayer and the encounter with Jesus Christ. Men whose strength is in prayer are unsinkable. Jesus began his public ministry with forty days of prayer in the desert, and he finished his life with a cry that is a final prayer: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34).
The violence against Christians is not just physical; it is also political, ideological, and cultural: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt 10:28). Many Christians, in Nigeria, in Pakistan, in the Middle East, and elsewhere, courageously undergo this physical martyrdom daily, in order to be faithful to Christ, without ever giving up their freedom of soul.
The persecution is more refined when it does not destroy physically but demolishes the teaching of Jesus and of the Church and, therefore, the foundations of faith by leading souls astray. By this violence, some people try to neutralize and depersonalize the Christians, so as to dissolve them in a fluid society without religion and without God. There is no greater disdain than indifference. This insidious war springs from a diabolical hatred of Jesus Christ and of his true witnesses. I can still hear the powerful echo of the voice of John Paul II in Lyon [October 4, 1986], warning us about the danger of an environment that may imprison us in forgetfulness, turn us away from the faith, and leave us defenseless against the fumes of rampant idolatry: “Of course, today you are not thrown to the beasts; no one tries to put you to death because of Christ. But is it not necessary to acknowledge that another sort of trial surreptitiously affects Christians? Currents of thought, life-styles, and sometimes even laws opposed to the true meaning of man and of God undermine the Christian faith in the lives of individuals, families, and society. Christians are not mistreated, they even enjoy all sorts of freedoms, but is there not a real risk that their faith will be, so to speak, imprisoned by an environment that tends to relegate it to the domain of an individual’s private life? Nowadays there is a massive indifference among many people with regard to the Gospel and the moral behavior that it demands; is this not a way of sacrificing little by little to the idols of selfishness, luxury, consumption, and pleasure, which are sought without limits and at any price? This form of pressure or seduction could kill the soul without attacking the body. The spirit of evil that opposed our martyrs is still at work. With other means, it continues to seek to turn people away from the faith.”
In the West, this violence is increasingly insidious, especially since it is careful to hide its true face. In the Gospel of John, Christ’s words are plain: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all this they will do to you on my account, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. It is to fulfill the word that is written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause’ ” (Jn 15:18-25).
Now the refinements of evil are becoming ever more insidious. A man who falls asleep for a moment must take care not to fall into a trap that is so pleasant that it is all the more formidable.
As we conclude this reflection, how should we understand the development of modern secularization?
Sometimes I get the feeling that the Western part of the world definitely intends to lock everything up in this world, in an aggressive rejection of transcendental relations. The separation between earth and heaven becomes so radical that religion becomes a foreign object, a lost island inhabited by individuals from another era. This oligarchic attitude of the promoters of atheism not only is based on oversimplifications but also is dangerous.
The fact remains that man lives in two dimensions, the heavenly and the earthly. He is created for this life and for the next. Here below it is important to harmonize the two by responding to corporal and spiritual needs without neglecting either. A society that forgets God hungers, without realizing it, for the spiritual foods that man cannot do without. This is why the secularization process that reduces the religious dimension to the smallest possible extent results in a division of man by depriving him of one of his lungs. Man is both on earth and in heaven; but man’s only roots are in heaven! Without its ramifications, what is human loses its strength. In April 2014, during a homily at his morning Mass in Saint Martha’s, Pope Francis commented on the dialogue between Moses and God on Mount Sinai as a way of addressing the question of prayer: “This prayer is a real struggle with God,” Francis explained, “a struggle on the part of the leader of a people to save his people, who are the people of God. Moses speaks freely in front of the Lord and in doing so teaches us how to pray without fear, freely, even with insistence.”
Prayer must be a “negotiation with God” to which we bring “our arguments”, Francis advised. For him, “Prayer changes our heart. It helps us better understand our God.” Therefore, it is important to speak normally with him, as with a friend, “Even rebuking the Lord a little: ‘You promised me this, but you did not do it. . .’ ”, speaking face to face. When Moses comes down from the mountain, he returns changed by his experience, for he thought that the Lord was going to punish and destroy his people for idolizing the golden calf. The pope added that during his prayer, Moses “tries to convince God, but in doing so, he rediscovers the memory of his people and God’s mercy.” He understands that “Our God is merciful. He knows how to forgive.” Moses goes back down full of energy, telling himself that he knows the Lord better. In prayer, therefore, Moses finds the strength to lead his people toward the Promised Land.
Prayer is reinvigorating because it is a struggle with God, just as Jacob wrestled all night until the dawn. If we hold firm, we will have the same experience: “When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.” Then he gives Jacob a new name and blesses him (Gen 32:23-32). Saint Paul, too, considers prayer to be a struggle: “Epaphras, who is one of yourselves, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, semper certans pro vobis in orationibus [always fighting for you in his prayers] that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God” (Col 4:12). The apostle is sure that spiritual work has no impact if it is not supported by intercessory prayer. To the Romans, but also to us, Saint Paul writes: “I appeal to you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf, that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints” (Rom 15:30-31).