An Exquisite Diagnosis

Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute (and a visiting professor at the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Marriage and the Family within the Pontifical Lateran University) offers a welcome reflection on American secularism in the Tablet. Hat tip to Amy Welborn and this mysterious entry.

Be as religious as you like in private, the Reasonable say, but don't you dare bring that God Guk into the Public Square. It's all us, all the time, here. After all, you religious people are all right-wing nuts that must be kept from ruining the True Worship of the Great-I-Am, with it's high celebration of the Sacrament of the One Thing that Matters. Fools have heard this, in words or in substance, for far too long. Mr. Gregg explores why. Some of his findings include:

But whether we speak of America as a religious nation or secular one depends, of course, on what we mean by secular. As Oxford’s John Finnis noted in a 2003 address at Princeton University, the word “secular” was coined by Latin Christians to describe those things which “are not divine, sacred, or ecclesiastical”, and that its resonances were not always negative. Finnis then pointed out that Christian faith actually encourages “secularisation” in so far as this means the extension of human understanding and control over fields of life previously inaccessible to human science and technology, precisely because Christian faith insists on both God’s transcendence and the intelligibility of his creation through science.

There is a world of difference, however, between this understanding of the secular and what Princeton’s Robert P. George describes as “orthodox secularism”. By this, George means “a sectarian doctrine with its own metaphysical and moral presuppositions and foundations, with its own myths, and, one might even argue, its own rituals”. Implicitly atheistic, deeply utilitarian in its mode of reasoning, and profoundly influenced by David Hume’s philosophical scepticism, orthodox secularism, as portrayed by George and other American scholars, has two effects upon public debate.

The first is that it treats concerns about subjectivity and autonomy as the primary reference point for moral, political and legal decision-making. A second effect is its radical privatisation of religion. Religion, it is held, is a strictly personal affair and ought not to exert any influence in the public square. Portrayed in these terms, secularism is a set of commitments that transcends typical right – left political divisions. Though influential American thinkers such as the now-deceased philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick disagreed about bread-and-butter political matters such as appropriate taxation levels, they were as one when it came to regarding a concern for autonomy as the ultimate trump-card in political discussion. Thus it was hardly surprising that both scholars signed a “philosophers’ brief” to the United States Supreme Court in 1997 arguing that people enjoyed a right to physician-assisted suicide. Nor did either believe that religiously informed conviction had much if any real role to play in political discussions.

Such views are not, incidentally, a fringe opinion within the American academy. Most secularists themselves would probably concede that these ideas constitute a reigning orthodoxy within many universities, including some with religious affiliations.

Practical atheism of the kind endorsed by the Reasonable has it's roots in the worship of secular myth. The absolute Self becomes the normative perspective through which the ordering of society must be organized. It explains why political liberals and Libertarians (in the American context), while disagreeing on economic issues, unite on social ones. Both regard the Autonomous Self as the one True Path to justice. Since God can't be taken seriously, any ideas of structuring society that reference any doctrine must be discarded. Especially if they compromise the integrity of the Autonomous Self.

Mr. Gregg then observes what the practical consequence is for Religious people in general, and Christians--especially Catholics--in particular:

The effect, of course, has been to turn issues such as school prayer into classic American cultural flashpoints. The broader and more serious implication of such judgements, however, is that they have effectively “established” a commitment to a type of atheism as the stance underlying much American judicial decision-making. In short, significant portions of American law now clearly require anyone working in the public square or associated in some way with the State to make choices and act “as if” there is no God. This is not, by any standard, a religiously neutral position. It might be said to constitute a desire to impose practical atheism upon the body politic. To paraphrase the Jesuit John Courtney Murray, “articles of peace” have been turned into “articles of faith”.

While American religious organisations receiving state funds are regularly required to demonstrate that no such funding is used to support “strictly religious” activities (which has given rise to the curious exercise of courts deciding what is and is not strictly religious), American law is some way from requiring what would amount to religious tests upon those serving in public office.

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It remains none the less true that secularism’s steady spread throughout American political discourse presents American Catholics with significant dilemmas. This becomes apparent when we recall that in Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council invites Catholics to work towards ensuring that “the divine law is inscribed in the life of the earthly city” (GS 43). Evidently, there is considerable room for prudential judgement among Catholics about the ways that they might contribute to such a goal. The choice not to work towards this end, however, is contrary to Catholic teaching.

For Catholics, the spiritual and the secular are different, but part of the same reality. Secularism’s rigid segregation of the spiritual from the temporal effectively requires Catholics to deny the essence of what they believe humans to be: spiritual and material beings whose ultimate destiny is either heaven or hell, a destiny that depends partly upon their free choices in this life, including their choices in the public square. The implication of secularism is that Catholics should adopt a schizophrenic existence, affirming their faith in their private lives but condemned to inhabit a public square which declares persona non grata anyone who does not indirectly affirm practical atheism as the only legitimate context for public discourse.

The results are obvious. Opponents of Stem Cell Research are told they are putting "politics before science" and jeopardizing lives. Opponents of abortion are decried as those that would rob women of their legitimate liberties. Those concerned about the relentless march of International society towards institutionalized euthanasia are ridiculed and ignored as "religious zealots." The list goes on and on. Of course, anti-catholic public exibitions such as the Piss Christ and the Dung-covered Madonna, works of "Art" that made their contraversial debute at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the mid-'90s are lauded as daring art. There is room in the Public Square for some religious discourse after all.

The varied historical misdevelopments of philosophy and epistemology certainly help to explain how society has come to this. However, at root is that insidious Evil every honest person on the planet has faced since time immemoriam. The Reality of this Mysterium Iniquity is testified to in Genesis.

We as a people have always been tempted to act as though we were God. Too often we are tempted to doubt God and his eternally abiding love for us. If we surrender to this temptation, then we desperately seek to become self-sufficiently independent. We fear our utter dependence on our Creator. We want to control our destiny, not be subject to another. Especially him. This was the tragic reality of Original Sin.

If we as a society margenalize Christ, then we have no answer for the Reality of Original Sin except denial. Thus, entire philosophies and worldviews become predicated on the denial of the obvious. The results tragically speak for themselves: Broken lives, dysfunctional societies, alienation and bitter divisions among brothers. We begin on Earth the Hell many of us may eventually face, where the presence of unforgiven and unrepentent sinners becomes unbearable, particularly when we're one of them. All because we had to hide from the basic fact of our own dependence on God. All because we turned from him into the comfortable illusions of self-sufficience that then bred one heart of darkness after another.

This American Secularism is the tragic fruit of terrifying decisions made by society over too long a period of years, even centuries. Fools suffer from it, for we can't accept the comforting illusion that it offers. Fortunately, a single point of light drives darkness for it. With Christ at our side, we are the Light of the World. Through his healing power and our witness, this present darkness will eventually yield to the glorious light of Love. When society accepts that it can depend on a Loving God in whom our deepest dreams come true, then society will at last cast down the pantheon of false Idols that it has worshipped for so long. Let us all pray that day comes soon. For all our sakes!