Charles Taylor on «The Life of the Church in a Secular Age»

so I hope the remarks won't beat you laughter disjointed cuz there's so many things to say but so I just start off really where we began I think with with Hans's talk and and joses talked at the beginning about the the take that we've been developing in discussion and on where we are the signs of the times or what's the nature of the age in which we we live and our kind of redefinition of the secular age in terms of plurality and so handsome made the very interesting formation of it in faith as an option that is faith where anybody's faith position their conscious of the fact that they're surrounded with other options that could be their options that may be the you know their brother or their brother-in-law or their friends have adopted and that is that gives a different feel a different sense to what their option is but I'd like to feel that a little bit in by speaking about a not another way of approaching this contemporary age through the concept of unbundling now how would you say that I mean in French ah da da da Marquis sommelier a called Daisy now people who speak and other man's language namely its value we all think of a nice expression to perhaps convey that but the let me give you an idea of what I'm getting at there are two kinds of you go back to the confessional state which was in some ways the norm for much of European society and the norm for my society for Quebec society until very recently you get two ways in which the people's lives are bundled together in a way that they're now not no longer bundled together first of all they're both there are different belongings there belonging to a church they're belonging to the society they're belonging to a state Quebec all were the same the same people were linked in there DCO belonging and there was social belonging and their national belonging in their citizenship there was a kind of bunching together of these different belongings and that has steadily declined and disappeared secondly another kind of bundling if you like within these churches there were tremendous number of different spiritual activities that with the liturgy and then there were various abilities of Mary and so on there were various charitable activities there were various pilgrimages there were various special devotions I could go on and on and these again were bundled they were a part of the life of the same parish or the same Church and now these same kind of activities exist but for many people they may belong to some church but they may also have a meditative practice which will be with some other group they will also be involved with myths and so forth Jo as far as their character ativ activity and so on and so on the second kind of unbundling right so we get an era of a maximum fragmentation you might say spiritual life is a class day I would say immature the maximum fragmentation of spiritual life this is not to be confused with individualism because people immediately remake different kinds different forms of sociability in all these different aspects of their lives but these are unbundled here the same person is a member of this meditative group for a meditation as member of this charitable organization is a member perhaps of this church as a memory they are they have a rich associative life but they they do not all come together in the way they did in the confessional state now that means in a certain sense the end of Christendom I mean the point of Krista was that one had a society and a culture an arch which is all informed by the Christian faith and there was great things in Christians Ave they had to speak with Pascal they were gone through a Museo they were great things and there were less great things in increasing them the great things we all know the less great world obviously society much more pushed towards conformity a society where there was coercive religious authority a society which therefore could be open to persecution I mean you open to the possibility of sliding into persecution and and various kinds of of ethnic cleansing as we had in the Iberian Peninsula and so on and so there were great things and and less great things but I think the most important thing is to realize that of course that that is something that is over that that dream is over we're in a different epochs so what does it mean to be in a different époque for us as a church what it means that the way people can exceed the way that they the paths that they can find to Christ to the church are gonna be very different so the ancient world that people for instance some people who were informed by Hellenistic philosophy and that's one way in and one way which gives a certain pitch to their understanding of the Christian faith and then there are people in other periods where for instance in the early Middle Ages or prior to that whole societies were barbarians so-called societies were brought into the church very often coercively you know inshallah man went into Saxony he didn't come in with a just holding a Bible and making a few sermons it was very coercive but nevertheless its whole societies that come they were brought in or same thing happened in the Americas with the with their with conquista they're in the song and they're just very very many different ways in which people can exceed to can approach so I want to speak about it inner Aries I want to have that in our mind what you can weigh you can pass through starting from your existing preoccupations and find yourself drawn to and becoming a member of the Catholic Church and there's a very particular situation in this very if you're like unbundled or it's not a spiritual society we live in in which people come largely because they are looking for something they are concerned by about finding people said people very often say finding meaning in life I think it's yeah that's a very generic term for what's going on but I think that there's very often something more more specific than in today that you find people are looking also for a way of giving their they have the sense that they could be much better people or or their society could be much better these two are linked and they're finding they're looking for a way not just a way of improving it but a way of becoming the kind of people that can really act and give themselves in order to make make the world a better place in other words there's a kind of ethical Ralph in a kind of ethical search involved and here I think the motive try to describe how this situation is different what that kind of ethical search prolonged into a search for God what's how that figures in people's lives today as against how it could figure in people's lives earlier now it's it's a bit of I have to make a point here before I run on it's a bit of an exaggeration to say it's a totally different era I think what we're moving we're moving from the era in Europe European and European you know including American extensions societies we're moving from an era where the confessional state was the norm if you like and maybe it might Quebec experiences speaking here thought to an era in which this kind of unbundling holds the era of seekers alongside other seekers alongside people with other options looking for a way of giving some direction to their lives so that where I want to end up and I must have time for the end is that in the Catholic Church we're gonna have people who are defining themselves in terms of both of these eras we are going to find people who regret very much the passing of Christendom you see what I mean by Christendom right are they Christianity thought right they they the whole society who would like to keep as much of it going in maybe in a smaller group as people leave the church if they are leaving the church who would like to win people back by arguing for a return to that and we can see one of the great attractions of Christendom was that you can look at it as a order of things very coherent order of things in which the religious outlook the political structures the moral compass that people shared the culture of the art etc who had this coherence and there's naturally been a reaction among many people in the 20th century as this began to fall apart saying we must above all return to that moral compass in the sense of order people even law and so on is and in face of certain events like fascism and Nazism you can understand why this is Churchill always said we were fighting for Christian civilization he wasn't a very strong believer you know but that was the that was the idea and in face of that you can see you can have a certain sympathy I mean interestingly enough you have someone like Bonhoeffer who's also fighting that but he's he's already got the post Christendom idea I think but that's that's an interesting side I think so but now I want to look at the way in which you could look at it if you said okay Christendom is behind us we have to move beyond and what would it look like what does it look like alright so I think the way to get at it and this may be this is a kind of getting into theological ground which I really shouldn't be doing because I'm rather an alphabet and in theology but I know I will be in this just audience I will be corrected so I want I won't go totally into perdition without any help for but I think we have to ask the question how in the given civilization Christian civilization or other how do people imagine the building of the kingdom how the kingdom of God grows and I think we had in Christendom very understandably a picture of the growth of the kingdom which really became synonymous with the growth of crystalline right the kingdom grows into a Christian civilization the Christian civilization then expands through missionary activity or conquest of various topic tribes saw me but you know but and the eschaton would be that everybody would be in the in the great structure right the there was something a little bit analogous developed as a like secular enlightenment rereading of this in the progress story that comes from the Enlightenment and as a matter of fact if you look back to the beginning of the 20th century it's rather unnerving to see how these two stories got into relation not so much in the Catholic world but in the Protestant world to think of it you know promised in the United States the world is becoming Christian which means it's becoming democratic which means it's becoming civilized and everybody will become like us but these were these were different stories but they had this kind of Interlake now I think that the story that most is meaningful to people today is the one that starts from the mustard seed and I'd like to give a reading of it I think that mustard seed image says in the Bible kingdom of God is like a mustard seed throw in the ground and then this great tree grows with bird's nest and they in the branches now I think that here we have a reading which is very different from either the Christendom reading or the progress story reading because there is some kind of discontinuity between the act of planting the seed and the growth it's this is great agricultural damage which often occurs in the gospel that God takes this up and but it's so I put the seed in but the future the development of that seed is not my doing but I think this what this can be understood what is this what's the great tree I think the great tree that grows is not anything that is a continuing structure of human life the great tree and here I'm wondering wildly speculative but I you know you have to make some leaps here the Great Tree is the very mysterious growth of human consciousness of human moral aspiration I mean think of the thought with us with handsome mother think of the axial period where at a certain point it's great discontinuity in their different parts of the world where people normally focused on their own society and thinking of other societies as outside and impossible enemies rise to some sense of universality or of a notion of the good which goes beyond simply our society doing well right the these ideas circulate and I'm convinced but I've no evidence convinced that they don't circulate simply by diffusion that if somebody learns from that society and goes to that society but that something and new enters human life and in some way it can communicate beyond now this I think is the the way the mustard seeds build and the specifically Christian context you have these eruptions of holiness in various ways you know some francis of assisi you could think of a great many examples and they move upward they get they get picked up elsewhere but what you don't have is a continuous building of institutions and exactly the same since if you look at the history of Christianity there have been whole Cris symptoms that have disappeared historian they've gone down they've gone off the radar does that mean they're not relevant for us no I think on the contrary they're all all these are building towards something which only God can bring to to fruition but we and we can learn from them it's very interesting that Dermot Machpelah in his wonderful history of Christianity for the first time I think included in his scope all these different Christian churches in the story and not just looking at the mainline development coming up to us but looking at this whole Christian archipelago if I put it this way this archipelago in history in time and space well now this this understanding it steady this means that people who are looking at that in these terms are displacing the main accent for many people of a safe and 1500 even earlier on in Latin Christendom which was individual salvation right this is talking about the salvation of the world and the to us I think it's us okay I have this mentality myself so I think I'm articulating something here that you know I think the big thing that tour Europe apart was in 1500 the conditions of individual salvation whether it's by works or by faith or scripture alone and so on not how do we build the kingdom how do we plant mustard seeds but how do we attain individual salvation I'm not knocking that necessarily but it's just not not what people think of today if they're they come to the church because they have needed out that if you like for generosity you might almost say that that's not its first of all in their minds alright so planting mustard seeds why do we go on leading them and I want to quickly try to to say something about about that because we live in a secular world now in the sense of the world that doesn't want to think in terms of the dimension of God and radition has these very strong ideas that we are developing have you come to ultimate anyway ultimate set of aspirations about equal society democratic rights for everyone and we certainly achieved certain institutional forms in a democratic world which are farther ahead in giving security and rights to lots and lots of people you know ideally the whole society on an equal basis and so on that's something that we've reached points that have never been reached before so people very often say why do we need I mean what-what can everything raised in the previous discussions why do people have to think about becoming Christian you know you just let the liberal impulse go on and so on well because plainly not not only are these structures subject to decay they can disappear just as the historian churches did of us and I would footnote in our present democratic society in the West I feel that we really are in a very bad direction dwarfs inequality and and 1% and so on which is not doesn't augur well not only that but at their best they are radically incomplete because they have to operate on rules generalities and so on and these always create deep problems difficulties for people for individual people types of people and so on I mean I can give an example after example the best intentioned and there are lots of our best intentions but the best intentioned building of institutions like hospitals and so on can just not see what the crying needs are of certain people are just give an example I mean I happened to be around at a hospital in Montreal when the PAS beatific air movement was first starting and I remember all the discussions people had about how doctors just didn't see what dying people were looking for the kind of contact they wanted so this was answered by a building up is another set of institutions and and and practices but if you look around you see how much this the piece the the the sense of the this being needed is something that very often arises out of Christian practice no not at all it or not minute saying exclusively coming out of that but very often arises out of Christian practices like Jean Vanier my markup Atreus you know seeing the need for people with development its own putting them into homes together and one can go on and on it's the question of seeing that need now here I'd like to give another dimension to the idea of canosa Simon because of lack of time I'll be terribly dogmatic I mean I think that there this will never end you're never going to get a society structure with rules in such a way that situations don't arise in which there really are such needs so what we need is people who have that sense of being able to recognize now I see that in the gears of the gospel now the gospel of course is very terse description so there's a lot of reading between the lines I mean it's not written by myself post I mean the Gospel according to Mark said we were something quite different but we have this very terse but I what I see is this person who managed to see people in a way that they'd never been seen before a clarity but what they were about about what they needed right and that's why when it says very terse they are the Gospel of Mark it from point I think you know he taught not that the scribes and Pharisees but with exodia with authority the authority comes from I read and seeing you know now how do you become capable of really seeing well there's a negative side you know the great poet English poet John Keats talked about negative capability the capability of constraining your own take on things the way you project on things and so getting that out of the way so that you can actually see the person or the thing or that or they you know that I escaped and so on before you but I think it also and east now looking at this in the Christian through perspective it needs something positive it needs that kind of love for the person concerned negatively take away the scales that are created by my own preoccupations and so on positively have a sense of this person as as lovable and I think that is the that's the great secret I think this is another dimension to canosa's that we have to add to the dimension we've been talking about we're very often it's a question of sacrifice very important sacrificing yourself as it were putting yourself apart or a side or even sacrificing their life but they're also another dimension to this Canosa switch is being able to get out of our own preoccupation and really see and the Bible seems to be telling it's not going across different parts of it that it's that seeing by God in that way that actually can call up the the best that we have in us right so I mean I I've always interpreted in the Genesis and God saw that it was good in terms of who was talking here the other day about in just yesterday I think it was it this morning in Italian it was about you know performative speed the other the Beatitudes Beatitudes are not descriptive they're performative right so I think God seeing is good is something something performative to that and in Christ's case something performative right so we have this great hunger in the world for being able to see like that and also we we have this spread out going beyond the Christian faith as a matter of fact there is as who said I think it was it was Bill Moriarty a minute ago that you have in the Buddhist tradition the idea of sunyata and the release of Karuna the risa the release of compassion that comes from being able to avoid the self right the same kind of connections being made here in other ways I mean my virtue of my idea about the axial age I think that there is a pedagogy of God and it's circulating and bursting young in various places and we have to honor it where a reversed South but from my sense if I why my Christian well if I want to be part of this I don't see any better way than to be in that stream of mercy from God that allows me to pass it on right so I think we're we have another kind of view of building the kingdom which is the sets of mustard seeds that we are being asked to plant and I mean I see what the Pope Francis is doing it very much in that in that light and that's why it strikes the world I think that that is exactly what what so strikes people it's not because it's not promising I'm gonna build a structure you know just follow me political structure I'm gonna build a structure which will make things better forever which people are rather suspicious of necessarily it is not waiting for these to be built it's going out there and planting these these seeds so we have this brought a different kind of spirituality than the one that is actuated and inspired by the idea of as much as possible continuing the Christendom form even if it's in a smaller group right we have okay pretty good that doesn't sound too condemned if y'all go over that we have to the big problem we have before us as Catholics is how to live together in the church in a sacramental union among people these very different orientations right I think that from my point of view in one of these orientations we have to make a very strong criticism of the pastoral practice of the shrinking Christendom because it leads to a kind of doughnut ISM in which you keep the impure out but we have to see how they can be inspired by their particular mustard seeds that they are finding inspiring and I think I can finish very quickly by giving you just a quick overview of what this common spirituality and today's age amounts to it is first of all a very strong sense that faith is a journey now this goes back to gregory of nyssa it goes back to augustine is there an old idea but it comes back in the notion that we are moving along in this capacity to receive from God and therefore give we're and even what that means we don't fully understand it means secondly that the place of doubt in our lives is very different it's not the doubt it's not negative doubt is what makes it possible to grow I do things that don't fit together and don't seem right and I don't know if I really can believe this it's on go on chewing on it that's where the way to go forward it means also that we recognize these mustard seeds outside the Christian Church someone like Malala yousufzai who stood up to the Taliban when she was almost killed and it's very moving she said you know God kept me alive and as a reason and the reason is that I've got to go up there and make sure that all girls get the possibility of being educated that is one of them you know that's a that's a mustard seed we have to recognize and cherish and it leads to a new kind of humanism humanism I would say of friendship of accompaniments we've been talking about of of sharing of learning for me from each other so it's a rather different way of living the faith than the one that has come down recently anyway in the Catholic Church in in the West and we have to find a place for that in the church but we have to find a way of that living together with people of over all the different sensibility and who are themselves inspired by certain mustard seeds in the in the past and so on and by certain features of the Catholic history and if I had okay two more minutes I mean I think that that is going to require a big change in our institutions because here I'm taking a leaf from the French group that made there this is research that yon Izone was published key saunaka they kept over for me that it's only by see at the moment what this means this difference is that people gravitate towards affinity parishes and I I don't think you can stop that I think that's the way it has to be but there have to be instances in which the faithful come together from out of these different media and have to argue and discuss decide certain things I mean you know pastoral councils in the given diocese let's say constituted from people these different tendencies who have to talk about this make decisions about this you know you really you get to know you've got to hate them more sometimes but you get to know people that you're condemning in another way than if you just sit in your parish and so there there can't we can't go on with the top-down structure we've been living under since the last 150 years or so think that that's that's clear but so there's a whole task of the reconstructing the church at that level that we have to keep in mind to have this goal well I think I'll stop here I mean another moment to do is to lay out two different kinds of spirituality that I see around me one growing the other more static and to try to get clearer and what the differences are and then to raise the big question I really have an answer to how do we live together okay thank you very much you

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Keywords: Charles Taylor (Author), A Secular Age (Book), Philosophy (Field Of Study), Secularization (Literature Subject)

Id: 152Ng0qYRIM

Length: 33min 31sec (2011 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2015