Christianity and Culture

Extract

Christianity has influenced Western culture more than any factor save human nature itself, and yet its influence is now greatly diminished. Reactions to this have usually taken the form of a Hegelian affirmation that Christianity, having served its historical purpose, is no longer important in itself; a nostalgic conservatism which rejects the culture of modernity simply; or a revivalism which ignores it. An alternative view rests on an analysis of culture and the enlightenment process of secularization to which the Church reacted by closing in on itself until the Second Vatican Council affirmed the legitimate autonomy of the secular. The Church itself, partly to blame for secularization through its practical demystification of nature and attempt to coercively supplant all pre- and non-Christian religious experience, should engage modernity while giving witness to human dignity and promoting a more human culture. Such a constructive recovery of Christian culture must avoid both politicization and moralism.