Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Moderne Kultur: Abwesenheit Gottes im Alltagsleben; Metastruktur: Simplifizierung; Pierre Teilhard; Dialektik; Ablehnung des Modernismus - unkritische Annahme moderner Positionen;
aggiomamento

Kurzinhalt: ... there is the reinterpretation of man in his world. This reinterpretation primarily occurs in the cultural superstructure ... But it is not confined to the superstructure. It is popularized, schematized, simplified

Textausschnitt: 111c I have been speaking, not of the whole of modern culture, not of its most vital part, but of its superstructure. I have said that God is absent from modern science precisely because such science systematically and exclusively is directed to knowledge of this world. Further I have said that Catholic theology is going through an unsettling period of transition in which older procedures are being repudiated and newer ones yield only incomplete and fragmentary benefits. But I have yet to ask whether God is absent not from the superstructure of modern culture but from the everyday, familiar domain of feeling, insight, judgment, decision. (Fs)

111d On this more concrete level modern culture involves a reinterpretation of man and his world, a transformation of the ordering of society and of the control over nature, and a new sense of power and of responsibility. All three have a bearing on the absence of God in modern culture. (Fs)

112a First, there is the reinterpretation of man in his world. This reinterpretation primarily occurs in the cultural superstructure, in the natural and the human sciences, in philosophy, history, and theology. But it is not confined to the superstructure. It is popularized, schematized, simplified. It is transposed from technical statement through simile and metaphor, image and narrative, catch-phrase and slogan, to what can be understood without too much effort and is judged to be, for practical purposes, sufficiently accurate. (Fs) (notabene)

112b Now it is quite conceivable that in a process of great cultural change all parts of the superstructure should keep in step and the popularizations of the several parts should be coherent. Such, however, has not been the transition from classicist to modern culture. For, in the first place, the classicist believed that he could escape history, that he could encapsulate culture in the universal, the normative, the ideal, the immutable, that, while times would change, still the changes necessarily would be minor, accidental, of no serious significance. In the second place, the classicist judged modern science in the light of the Aristotelian notion of science and by that standard found it wanting, for modern science does not proceed from self-evident, necessary principles and it does not demonstrate conclusions from such principles. In the third place, classicist churchmen found that the natural sciences frequently were presented in a reductionist version that was materialistic and, if not atheistic, at least agnostic, while the historical sciences were the locus of continuous attacks on traditional views of the Church in its origins and throughout its development. In brief, so far were churchmen from acknowledging the distinctive character of modern culture that they regarded it as an aberration that had to be resisted and overcome. When they were confronted with a heresy, which they considered to be the sum and substance of all heresy, they named it modernism. So far were they from seeking to enrich modern culture with a religious interpretation that they had only mistrust for a Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. (Fs) (notabene)

113b Besides its reinterpretation of man in his world, modern culture transforms man's control over nature and in consequence involves a reordering of society. The new scene is one of technology, automation, built-in obsolescence, a population explosion, increasing longevity, urbanism, mobility, detached and functional relations between persons, universal, prolonged, and continuing education, increasing leisure and travel, instantaneous information, and perpetually available entertainment. In this ever changing scene God, when not totally absent, appears an intruder. To mention him, if not meaningless, seems to be irrelevant. The greatest of financial powers, the power to increase gross national income by taxing and spending for worthy purposes, is restricted to non-religious ends, so that pluralism is given lip-service while secularism is the religion-or, perhaps, the anti-religion-by law established. At the same time, a rigorously codified religious organization finds itself ever less capable of moving with ever fluid situations, [...]

115a Now this concern with the future of humanity is a concern for humanity in this world; so it has been thought to be purely secular. Such a conclusion is, I believe, mistaken. It is true that concern for the future is incompatible with a blind traditionalism, but a blind traditionalism is not the essence of religion. It is true that concern for the future will work itself out by human means, by drawing on human experience, human intelligence, human judgment, human decision, but again this is quite compatible with a profoundly religious attitude. It was St. Ignatius Loyola who gave the advice: act as though results depended exclusively on you, but await the results as though they depended entirely on God. What is false is that human concern for the future can generate a better future on the basis of individual and group egoism. For to know what is truly good and to effect it calls for a self-transcendence that seeks to benefit not self at the cost of the group, not the group at the cost of mankind, not present mankind at the cost of mankind's future. Concern for the future, if it is not just high-sounding hypocrisy, supposes rare moral attainment. It calls for what Christians name heroic charity. In the measure that Christians practise and radiate heroic charity they need not fear they will be superfluous either in the task of discerning man's true good in this life or in the task of bringing it about. (Fs)

116a I have been speaking of the absence of God in modern culture. I have dwelt at length on the many ways in which he is absent both in the superstructure and on the day-to-day level of that culture. But every absence is also a potential presence, not indeed in the sense that the past is to be restored, but in the sense that our creativity has to discover the future and our determination has to realize it. Nor is God's presence only potential. Evidently, almost palpably, it is actual. Pope John spoke to the whole world. Vatican II stirred it profoundly. For the Spirit of God is moving the hearts of many and, in Paul Tillich's phrase, ultimate concern has grasped them. (Fs)