Because I have spent
much of my time, during the past 36 years, on university campuses I have seen
and felt the effects of changes in the intellectual climate in higher education
first hand. I have seen and felt the effects of the cultural shifts that have
removed the process of reasoning from its grounding in faith. During a time
when Western culture is increasingly characterized by relativism, materialism,
secularism, and radical individualism the church stands out as a sign of
contradiction. It awakens people from a false identity, as beasts or machines,
and calls them back to their humanity. Frequently, however, the witness that
the church provides is not received or is not understood. People have been
taught that it is important to study technology, but not ethics; that it is
important to be able to affect outcomes, but not to grasp meaning; and that it
is important to have empirical knowledge, but not knowledge of the spirit. The
consequences of this cultural relativism, this indifference toward inquiry into
meaning, are the poor, wandering souls that one might see staggering down
Forbes Avenue on any Thursday, Friday or Saturday night, resembling sheep
without a shepherd. As a teacher I have been struck by how often my students
have expressed the emptiness they feel, and how -- even if they anticipate
having a good job with a steady income, they feel that their lives are adrift
and that their relationships are devoid of meaning.
I’ll never forget the
time when, as an undergraduate, I had an office meeting with one of my
professors about film criticism. When she found out that I had converted to
Catholicism she yelled at me for the better part of an hour. She was trying to
convince me that Catholicism was irrational, but she never gave me a chance to
respond. Her tirade was loud enough that several other faculty members looked
in on us to see who had disturbed her so violently. The experience was
memorable not so much because I was intimidated by it -- I had grown
accustomed, by that time, to having contrarian views in the classroom -- the
experience made an impression on me because I began to realize how deeply
ingrained hatred of the sense of the sacred had become in institutions of
higher education, and how emotionally invested critics of religion had become
in their secularist and relativist worldviews. Although I somewhat understood
the nature and the challenge of institutionalized ideologies that were
anti-religious, I was unsure of how to respond. How does the church
re-evangelize its people in a cultural environment that is so intolerant of the
church’s teaching? How does the church equip students with the tools they will
need in order to inquire into anything more than empirical truths? What
criteria should one use when one is looking for a more comprehensive truth? How
would one recognize that truth when one encountered it?
Of course, my experience
with the rise of the intolerant secularist ideologies in higher education
occurred before a series of scandals that rocked the church from within were
made public. The church’s internal scandals, and the insatiable appetite of
popular media to exploit them, has created an opening for long-standing critics
to attack the church and to try to shame it into silence. Needless to say, this
situation has created a much harder environment for the church to present the
face of Christ to humanity -- but this is a situation that we have brought upon
ourselves. The scandals have added to the skepticism and cynicism of the
general public. They have provided ammunition for those who have argued that
there is no reason for a person to commit themselves to anything beyond
self-gratification and a utilitarian approach to others. People now have an
excuse to turn inward. The scandals have reinforced the notion that religion
should, at best, be a private matter and that its voice should not be heard in
the public arena. The church must root out the corruption within it, primarily
to help the victims of abuse to heal, but also because these scandals weaken
the church’s ability to proclaim the Gospel. The world is looking for the
answers that only the church -- through its apostolic ministry, its liturgy,
its sacraments and the communion of the universal body of Christ -- can give,
but they are reluctant to trust an institution that they believe does not live
by its own teachings.
The Church is going
through troubling times, but there have been troubling times in the past and
there will -- no doubt -- be troubling times in the future. Anyone who has read
the accounts of these scandals should be disturbed by them, but to be
scandalized is not to be undone. The church is a divinely inspired institution,
but it is run by people who are not perfect. There are no solutions in turning
one’s back on the church. My personal experience has been that every time I
have searched for answers to the meaning of life, outside of the church, I have
come up empty. I have vainly sought solutions in technology, politics, the
academy, economics, and popular culture. There were no answers to be found in
any of these things once Christ was removed from the core of them. I have
spoken with many others who have experienced the same thing. As imperfect as
the church is, each time I have searched for answers outside of it I found
myself coming back and saying, along with Simon Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we
go? You have the words of eternal life.”
(From my Spiritual Autobiography)
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