A Catholic Modernity?: Charles Taylor's Marianist Award Lecture, with responses by William M. Shea, Rosemary Luling Haughton, George Marsden, and Jean Bethke Elshtain

by James L. Heft (Editor), Charles Margrave Taylor, William M. Shea

This book offers a series of reflections on the state of Christianity, and especially Catholicism, in the world today. The centerpiece of the volume is a lecture by the renowned philosopher Charles Taylor, from which the title of the book is taken. The lecture, delivered at Dayton University in January of 1996, offered Taylor the opportunity to speak about the religious dimensions of his intellectual commitment--dimensions left implicity in his philosophical writing. In fact, this is the only place where Taylor, a Roman Catholic, spells out his theological views and his sense of the cultural placement of Catholicism, its history and trajectory. He uses the occasion to argue against the common claim that obstacles to religious belief in modern culture are epistemic--that they have to do with the triumph of the scientific worldview. The real obstacles, says Taylor, are moral and spiritual, having to do with the historic failures of religious institutions.

Four well-known commentators on religion and society, two Protestant, two Catholic, were invited to respond to Taylor's lecture: William M. Shea, George Marsden, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Rosemary Luling-Haughton. Their chapters offer a variety of astute reflections on the tensions between religion and modernity, and in particular on the role that Catholicism can and should play in contemporary society. The volume concludes with Taylor's perceptive and thoughtful response to his interlocutors. A Catholic Modernity provides one of the most thoughtful conversations to date about the place of the Catholic Church in the modern world, and more generally, about the role of religion in democratic liberal societies.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Christianity, History

141 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Kaleb]

A lecture by Charles Taylor on the role of the Catholic Church and Catholics in modernity. Taylor is sympathetic to the modernist critiques of Christendom (the marriage between Christianity with "a form of culture and a mode of society"). However, Taylor (as a devout Catholic) is also critical of modernity's denial of transcendence and all the problems that brings. Much of the lecture is about how Catholics should follow the example of Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit priest who lived and evangelized in late 16th century China. Ricci lived in a foreign nation with deep appreciation for how different it was, while still finding a way to bring the gospel to it. Christians should find a way to do the same with modernity.

Example: It was only after the rise of modernity/the Enlightenment that universal human rights were recognized, something that certainly didn't exist in Christendom. Before, because of all the political power Christians had, we threw away humility and tolerance for burning heretics at the stake and the Inquisition. And yet, this universality places strong demands on us, that we should care for all people, all over the world and we should do it a lot. This runs up against a problem; there is no transcendental or spiritual motivation for this universal solidarity, and it, in fact, likely comes from our own sense of moral superiority ("a whimsical and fickle thing"). There's more, but the general idea is that modernity's denial of transcendence leaves us with big holes in our moral and spiritual lives (i.e., it also cannot make sense of death or suffering).

Taylor's lecture is followed by four commenters, who praise/highly criticize him in their own essays. William M. Shea's was my favorite, with a great summary of the Catholic Church's changing attitude towards modernity (from very bad to neutral/ok after Vatican II). Taylor finishes with an essay of his own, responding to the four.

4.5

Quotes
"We return again to the point our argument was at some time ago, in which the Christian conscience experiences a mixture of humility and unease: the humility in realizing that the break with Christendom was necessary for this great extension of gospel-inspired actions; the unease in the sense that the denial of transcendence places this action under threat."

"I said earlier that just having appropriate beliefs is no solution to these dilemmas, and the transformation of high ideals into brutal practice was demonstrated lavishly in Christendom, well before modern humanism came on the scene. So is there a way out? This cannot be a matter of guarantee, only of faith. But it is clear that Christian spirituality points to one. It can be described in two ways: either as a love or compassion that is unconditional—that is, not based on what you the recipient have made of yourself—or as one based on what you are most profoundly, a being in the image of God."

"God knows the culture needs deep and abiding criticism, but God knows just as well that it is 'our' culture and not 'theirs.' Living in the present, then, means evaluating and reconstructing the past, discerning what can be carried on and built upon, what must be reconfigured, and what has to be laid aside in the Church, as well as in the culture."

[Christopher Blosser]

Altogether I found this to be a moderately interesting interesting book -- a somewhat dated exchange taking place in the 90's between Charles Taylor and various academics in the context of the publication (and major tome), Sources of the Self , as well as the pontificate of John Paul II.


I'm going to admit as well that I have found frustrating at times the manner in which Taylor speaks in the self-neutered, all-too-diplomatic and second-guessing tones of academia, wishing that as a Catholic (which he genuinely is, I have little question) he could perhaps be more overtly so in his profession. In response to George Marsden's challenging his reference to Mateu Ricci as a model for modern Catholic engagement, he admits as much:

[Marsden]: "Like Ricci dressing as a Confucian scholar, do we always have to dress our views in terms already acceptable to the contemporary academy?" Yes, we do a lot of that, obviously too much. The reasons are many, including not very admirable ones to do with the advantages (reputation, tenure, promotion) of conformity.

Underlying all that is the remarkable fact that academic culture in the Western world breathes an atmosphere of unbelief. …

Taylor elaborates on the nature of his approach in his concluding response, where he attends to the topic of philosophizing in an atmosphere of exclusive humanism and — by way of example — addressing modern moral philosophy's myopic construal of morality as "finding the principle or principles from which we can derive what we ought to do":

All this leads me to believe that the most important thing Christian scholars should attempt is to change the agenda, open it up. This may mean bringing back issues that may not immediately, on their face, relate to Christian faith—like this question of the place of the quality of the will in moral philosophy.We have to think of the ways in which our whole debate with modernity, our friendly yet adversarial exchange, is impeded and stifled by a drastically foreshortened intellectual agenda and then move to widen this. If we can get to the point where mainstream people have to defend the narrow focus we will have succeeded.

This is the second book I've read by Taylor, the other (The Ethics of Authenticity) being written in the same fashion of unpacking the contemporary "ethics of authenticity" and posing various insightful and challenging questions.

Reading between the lines, I've come to appreciate his subtle manner of questioning, which is both genuinely self-critical (in terms of appraising his own tradition of Catholicism and what he has inherited) as well as challenging the bastions of the exclusively humanistic academia that he inhabits in his profession. Case in point, a section (pp. 110-114) where he exposes the insufficiencies of understanding human moral relations strictly in terms of "individual assent" and the protection of the "veto-exit" option, especially in its failure to appreciate marital love and the functioning of family and community.

Likewise, for a book published two decades ago, there were specific passages which for me still spoke volumes to our tumultuous times (where dialogue has practically broken down and partisan politics has descended into a cacophony of shrill voices shouting past each other). Consider

We have seen it with Jacobins and Bolsheviks and today with the politically correct left and the so-called Christian right. We fight against injustices that cry out to heaven for vengeance. We are moved by a flaming indignation against these: racism, oppression, sexism, or leftist attacks on the family or Christian faith. This indignation comes to be fueled by hatred for those who support and connive with these injustices, which, in turn, is fed by our sense of superiority that we are not like these instruments and accomplices of evil. Soon, we are blinded to the havoc we wreak around us. Our picture of the world has safely located all evil outside us. The very energy and hatred with which we combat evil prove its exteriority to us. We must never relent but, on the contrary, double our energy, vie with each other in indignation and denunciation.

Another tragic irony nests here. The stronger the sense of (often correctly identified) injustice, the more powerfully this pattern can become entrenched. We become centers of hatred, generators of new modes of injustice on a greater scale, but we started with the most exquisite sense of wrong, the greatest passion for justice and equality and peace. [pp. 32-33]

And also:

When I hear an exclusivist humanism waxing indignant about the crimes and errors of the church in history, I often partly agree. We all feel this today at some point; who defends the Inquisition? My feelings are divided, complex. But I also see a complexity in my interlocutor, who has an important moral point but is also resisting something: resisting the insight that the love of God is something bigger and more important and more powerful than all this human bumbling and evil.

But then that makes us brothers under the skin. We all — believers and unbelievers alike — spend a lot of energy resisting God. It takes a lifetime of prayer to melt the resistances, and even then. . . . And one thing we can immediately see, from our own case as well, is that anger, righteous anger, is a great weapon of resistance. Our modern Western world is awash in righteous anger, reciting litanies of abuse and obloquy. The point is often well taken, in that the abuses are or have been real and crying.

Beyond this, what the anger is often doing for people is stopping their moral and spiritual growth because it's a tremendously effective resistance against it. For one thing, I feel good about myself because, whatever my minor imperfections, they pale into insignificance in face of the horrible deeds of those (communists or capitalists, white males or feminists, etc.). For another, I certainly don't need to bother about any insights I might gain from those unspeakable enemies of humanity, God, or whatever.
We have to be more aware of what anger is doing for us, as resisters — and therefore against us, as lovers of God. [p. 124]

[Beejai Richardson]

Imagine a panel of five individuals. The key speaker will be given a topic and will then share on it for thirty minutes. Then, in turn, the other four speakers will be given ten minutes to address and expound on what the first speaker shared. Finally, the original speaker will be given fifteen minutes to address each of the speakers in turn and then add to or adjust his original thesis. Now fill that panel with five Catholic philosophers and give them the topic: the intersection of their catholic faith with modernity. Finally, put the entire thing in literary form. Viola, you have Catholic Modernity.

The book was OK. It was a short read and therefore worth my time. There is nothing here incredibly eye opening or mind blowing. Taylor's main thrust is that the Enlightenment and the Reformation were both necessary for the RCC to become what it is today. Likewise, the church needs to continue engagement, not capitulation or isolation, with modern culture to continue refining itself into something that has a voice in our world.

My biggest disappointment was that I was expecting a bit more of a debate from the other four contributors. They pretty much all agreed with him and then expanded on one particular point or facet from their own perspective. You could say it was really more of a "yes fest" than an actual dialogue. That and also, this book does feel a bit dated. I wonder how different it would play out if it were all to take place now, twenty some odd years later.

[Billie Pritchett]

Charles Taylor's book A Catholic Modernity? is pretty interesting but I don't know what I think about it still. Here's why. Taylor argues that actually the Enlightenment changes and stuff that came about were necessary and the Protestant Reformation before the Enlightenment was necessary in order to bring about good changes within the Catholic Church. He takes as an analogy for how Catholicism ought to proceed those Jesuits who went to China and began to incorporate Chinese cultural practices into the Catholic mass. Taylor thinks that's essentially what the Catholic Church ought to do: adopt both some of the universal and particular principles and practices of cultures and learn from those cultures.

But something about this book feels dissatisfying. It's not clear to me what, if anything, is left of the Catholic Church, and Catholic principles. I wish he would make it clear what's ultimately worth defending, why anyone would need a Catholic modernity, and how Catholicism could be helpful in informing and enriching our spiritual lives. Part of the problem for me comes when scientific and Catholic teachings contradict. What to do about that? Taylor sidesteps what seems to be the most important thing, that big elephant standing in the room.

[Adam]

2/5 I do not recommend.

This book is a printed reduction of a lecture given by Charles Taylor, along with four responses. Taylor’s thesis is simple: that Catholics can be modern, since to be Catholic is to be of all peoples. The responses in this volume are rather lackluster, and I found that two of them did not really say much of anything.

I really do not know what to make of this book. There is no denying that modernity has affected the core of my being. I was raised in a time of humanism, where the public school system intentionally indoctrinated this philosophy into me. But such a way of thinking must be kept in check, much like former idol worshipers must guard their hearts against violating the second commandment. My assessment of this goes beyond this review, but it is worth pondering as I ask, “How do I remain a consistent Christian with these influences in my life?” For Taylor, the question is how one remains both Catholic and modern. For Taylor and the responders, the answer is never truly found, but merely acknowledged—and what is acknowledged is, in several ways, lacking.

Moreover, I found some seriously concerning worldviews bleeding through the pages that were adopted by these twentieth-century Catholics.

To be quite honest, I would not have read this book if it had not been assigned for a seminary class. Perhaps someone else could find usefulness in it where I could not, but what I found most useful was the opportunity to reflect on how much it ultimately says next to nothing.

[Lara Simone Bhasin]

I only read Taylor's own lecture, not the commentaries. But it seemed like a great introduction to Taylor's thought.

[Samppa Sirnö]

Good book for those interesred in religion and present day philosophy. Both fot christians and atheists.

[David Le]

Charles Taylor's lecture on "A Catholic Modernity?" introduces readers to a thoughtful look at the relationship between the Catholic Church and modernity. A interesting read for those concerned about Catholicism in the postmodern world. Pertaining to the rest of the book, the four responses (from 2 Catholic and 2 Protestant scholars) and Taylor's concluding response definitely serve to fully flesh out the concepts elucidated in Taylor's original essay. All in all, a thought-provoking short work for the post-Christendom world.