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Faith in Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

James Sweeney CP
James Sweeney CP*
Affiliation:
Heythrop College, Kensington Square, London, W8 5HQ
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This article, working within a sociological framework, discusses the issues and challenges arising at the church-culture interface, which are of central importance for ecclesial credibility, many of which came up in the 2012 Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization. It suggests that, while there are evident problems with postmodern culture, the key problem lies within the Church itself, in the disconnect between contemporary modes of cultural production and the dominant mode of transmission of the Christian faith. The remedy would be a presentation of the gospel and an ecclesial witness that is deeply respectful of individuals searching for authentic ways of living and that invites and enables them to find in a renewed church the path to true freedom.

Keywords

Faithevangelizationchurchculturesecularization
Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 94 , Issue 1050 , March 2013 , pp. 148 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2013 The Dominican Council.

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References

1 2012 Synod Instrumentum laboris, available at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20120619_instrumentum-xiii_en.html

2 The Tablet, 21.01.12, p. 27

3 Brown, Callum G., The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularization 1800–2000, London: Routledge, 2000Google Scholar.

4 These trends are charted in the recent publication, Goodhew, David (ed), Church Growth in Britain: 1980 to the Present, Farnham: Ashgate, 2012Google Scholar.

5 Goodhew 2012, p. 254

6 Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age, Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007Google Scholar.

7 Hervieu-Léger, Danièle, Religion as a Chain of Memory, London: Polity Press, 2000Google Scholar.

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11 Milbank, John, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990Google Scholar.

12 The subtraction account, in Taylor's words: “. . . stories of modernity in general, and secularity in particular, which explain them by human beings having lost, or sloughed off, or liberated themselves from certain earlier, confining horizons, or illusions, or limitations of knowledge. What emerges from this process – modernity or secularity – is to be understood in terms of underlying features of human nature which were there all along, but had been impeded by what is now set aside. Against this kind of story, I will steadily be arguing that Western modernity, including its secularity, is the fruit of new inventions, newly constructed self-understandings and related practices, and can't be explained in terms of perennial features of human life.” (p. 22)

13 For another discussion of this feature of contemporary belief, see Hervieu-Leger, Danielle Religion as a Chain of Memory, Oxford: Polity Press, 2000Google Scholar.

14 This is a distinction that Archbishop Longley of Birmingham was careful to preserve in a recent talk – although he reversed the terminological convention, and made secularization negative and secularism positive. See report: http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=19785

15 Rahner, Karl, The Shape of the Church to Come, London: SPCK, 1974Google Scholar.

16 Hellemans, Staf, 2009, ‘A Critical Transition: From Ultramontane Mass Catholicism to Choice Catholicism', in Beentjes, P.C. (ed.) The Catholic Church and Modernity in Europe, Tilburg Theological Studies, Berlin: LIT Verlag, pp. 32–54Google Scholar.

17 The Tablet, 21.01.12, p. 27

18 Giddens, Anthony, Modernity and Self-Identity, London: Continuum, 1994Google Scholar.