This volume collects papers given at a symposium which concluded a two year research project on the subject of ‘passing on faith in social and religious processes of transformation’. Each paper is in German and in English, hence the bilingual title. As with many symposia, the papers come at this topic from a number of perspectives, but there are some important themes that are common to them all. Principal among these is the approach to the process of secularisation – all the authors start from the basis that this process is not merely something inevitable, but rather something to be welcomed. The agenda of the secular world is seen as setting the agenda to which the Church must respond. Nowhere is this more clear than in Francesca Restifo's short contribution on ‘Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’, which welcomes the guiding principles on extreme poverty and human rights and urges upon states their legal obligation to take steps to eliminate extreme poverty. The author subtitles her reflection ‘Moving from Charity towards a Human Rights-based approach’: this is a curious position for a theologian to take, as it suggests that the traditional priority of love over law should be reversed. Although the paper is a short one (and thus this may be an unfair criticism of a wider process of thought) it is striking that neither explicitly Christian principles nor explicitly theological authors are cited. In this context the reflections on Pope Benedict XVI on the relationship between justice and charity (in Deus Caritas Est 26–29) would surely have been relevant to an attempt to establish whether there was any space for the handing on of faith in the context of this development in human rights legislation. Moreover, the fact that Dr Restifo acts as International Advocacy director for Franciscans International might have led one to expect some insight on the subject of poverty from St Francis, who is not even mentioned, let alone analysed.
This is not to say that secularisation is viewed in a simple way. One of the merits of the collection is that the picture of secularisation is drawn out to show that it is not a simple and uniform phenomenon, but varies in different regions of the world and in different ecclesial contexts. José Casanova has a paper in the collection addressing this situation in a way which draws attention to the many-sided phenomenon that has come to be described as secularism, and others expand on this by looking at different regions and ecclesial contexts. András Máthé-Tóth's tantalisingly brief paper on central and eastern European perspectives raised a number of important questions, of which the most fundamental was that whether religion has become an ‘empty signifier’ in the public square (p. 113): if all are to define religion for themselves, then the idea of passing on faith must go through a radical re-appraisal. Reflections on this elsewhere in the collection draw on the experience both of parish life and of the situation of ecclesial media communications; it might at first seem paradoxical that in the parish situation focus on the core activity of the Sunday Eucharist was identified as the way forward – but a careful reading even of this description reveals that this strategy fits into the characteristic shift from ‘we’ to ‘I’ identified by Michael Plattig in another contribution. Joseph Nuzzi's description of parish apostolate reads like a working out in practice of Plattig's perception that the ‘readiness to be transformed and become a spiritual community grows out of the spirituality of sisters and brothers in their individual response to God's call’ (p. 305).
Theoretical attempts to respond to this come largely from the Franciscan tradition, seeking to draw inspiration from Bonaventure's theology as well as the example of Francis himself. The one contribution from the Dominican tradition (Bernhard Kohl on ‘The vulnerability of the person within Dominican spirituality’) exemplifies the radical turn away from the transcendent which is typical of the papers in this collection. Others will be better placed than I to decide whether ‘helping people in pluralism to be able to take part in discussion’, as they live in ‘a pluralist society on the way to realising their freedom, on the way to greater realisation of their dignity’, to ‘the development of an autonomous human identity reflected in self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem’ (pp. 279–280) are central to Dominican life and identity; at the very least, a deeper examination of Dominican history might have raised questions about the simple equation of ‘contemplari’ with ‘study’. One of the weaknesses of the methodological decision to start with the positions of the secular world (in this case, the theoretical tradition of Habermas) is that references to the tradition can end up looking like citations of proof texts, rather than genuine attempts to engage with the tradition in such a way as to enable it to speak to the present.
One striking feature of this collection is something else that is absent. Not merely is the Christian tradition largely absent, but so is another dialogue partner whom the title might have led one to expect to be present. The dichotomy between heavenly and worldly that is such a feature of Marx's thought on religion, and its importance for his theory of the secular state, might have been thought to make him (and by extension the Marxist tradition) an obvious dialogue partner. While it is clear from the various contributions to this collection (in the unlikely event that anyone might have thought otherwise) that there are no simple answers for either the Church as a whole, or religious orders more specifically, to the challenges posed by society, whether secular or post-secular, one may reasonably think that a two-year research project could have looked somewhat beyond the categories of the flourishing field of secularism studies. For those interested in that field, this will be a thought-provoking contribution to discussion, but for those outside it I suspect that more bridges will need to be built if the analysis that has gone on is to be fruitful in everyday Church life.
