8/6/2019 Religious crisis?

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-crisis 1/2

NOTESONSPIRITUALITYFOROURTIMES

CCCCONVIVIUMPRESSCCCCCCCC

O nSecular C ultureand R  eligious C risis 

Our context —variously identified as «modernity»,«late-modernity»,«hyper-modernity»,or «post-modernity»—

somewhatlike quicksand.Weare notonly facing a time of changes,but,asthefinal documentof theAssembly of

Latin-American Bishops held in Aparecida says, we are confronting an epochal change, and this means signific

changesfor humanlife,its configuration,itsmeaning andself-understanding,alongwith a feeling of enormous

certainty,insecurityandanxiety.

Oneof thegreatest impactsof thecurrent changes is no doubt its effect on religion.If during the Age of Enlight

ment, human rationalitybecame increasingly visible and achieved the statusof a fundamental principle govern

human life, what we see today is quite different.Modernity is being replaced bya new state of affairs, which hum

knowledge is still far from having deeply assimilated, and it is concretely in the twentieth century that this pro

appeared moreclearly.

Religion suffers the consequencesof this new post-modern worldview. From a modern perspective, forsometh

to be considered legitimateandtrue, it must have gone througha process of rational comprehension.Thiswas s

as the antidote for the fanaticism, superstition and intolerance that religion has been accused of fostering over years.

Today, human beings consider themselves as autonomous and emancipated.Science and technology resolve t

problems,replacing beliefs. The individual is the center of the universe, of phenomena and events,somehow

placing God himself. Human beings alone are the ones responsible for finding happiness and meaning in

throughtheirthinkingandreasoningcapabilities.

In a similar way that theocentrism, at the beginning of the modern era,fell into deep crisis and lost its power to

plain the world, the same such process is now underway regarding Cartesian rationality. This crisis appears

symptom of the birth of a new era: the one in which we now live. With all utopias now collapsed, certainties gand abundant means to achieve scarce and poorly defined ends, the contemporary human being is seeking «p

experiences»,experiences that cangive their livesmeaning andconveywhether life isstill worthliving.

Faith,belief or «religious organizations», with their perpetually insufficient messages about human beings, ar

longerthe best means of communicatingthese peak experiences.As Zygmunt Bauman says «Havingdisconne

the dream of peak experiences from the religiously-inspired practices of self-negation and withdrawal from wor

attractions,we feel obliged to connect this dream to the desire for mundane goods and deploy it as a fuel for an

tenseconsumerism».

LETTERFROMTHEEDITOR7REGISTER

TODAYATWWW.CONVIVIUMPRESS.COMANDRECEIVEOURLATESTPRESSRELEASES,VIDEOSANDLETTERS

FROMTHEEDITOR

 A

8/6/2019 Religious crisis?

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/religious-crisis 2/2

CCCCONVIVIUMPRESSCCCCCCCC

Living a humanlife hasbecome a synonymfor enjoyingthedelightsof consumerism.Livingfullynow meansto

isfy the endless hunger of human desire in a highly material manner. Conspicuous and excessive consumptio

material goods has been elevated by the consumer to the status of true religion. Our mantra is no longer «I th

therefore I am», but «I consume, therefore I am». We are confronted by a consecration of commercial and c

sumeristrelations.

Nevertheless,religionasapathtotranscendencehasnotbeenbanishedfromthehumanhorizon,asthe«master

suspicion» once prophesied.The same modern thinkers who strongly criticized the superstitious and magical

mentsof Christianity arenow called torecognizethestrengthof transcendenceasa constitutiveelementof hum

ity. Even committed atheists, such as André Comte Sponville, speak of a «spirituality of atheism» that grant

humanbeingssomeexperiencesthatcannotbeclassifiedasrationalornatural.

In this scenario, religion turns into something private, a property pertaining exclusively to the inner forum

human consciousness,without mediation or institutions.It becomes increasingly something to be lived within

sphere of private life, where each person holdstruths and beliefs apprehended in a mix of concepts,rituals andperiences. They are considered and discerned by whatever it is that influences people within their own experie

andbythegratifyingsentimentsthatthislivedexperiencegrants.

The twentieth century, a century without God, in which the divinities were still flitting and volatile-objects to

consumed-pointed to the height of the postmodern process.Retrieving transcendence, but fragmenting it, it p

sented transcendencewithout a face,without identity, withoutabsolutes.«Religious» experiencesproliferateag

when they seemed to have disappeared. Nevertheless,in spite of a new configuration, they are equallyobjects t

consumed.They speak to the sensesand areexchanged by other experiences,equallysuperficial, and the fruit is

exhaustion of the potential for fulfillment and delight, which increasingly creates, as the scientist of religion

Heisighas pointed out,a «frigid» society. Incontrastto this state of affairs,it isthe mysticswho canshow onceag

the burning roads of «pathos», of that passion without which human life loses its flavor, and depression or sui

become dailyoccurrences.

MCB

DepartmentofTheo

PontificalCatholicUniversityofRiode Ja

DownloadallourLettersfromtheEditoratwww.conviviumpress.com

ConviviumPress,Inc.

LETTERFROMTHEEDITOR7

BUYITAT:

WWW.CONVIVIUMPRESS.COM

 A

NOTESONSPIRITUALITYFOROURTIMES