Blog:Visions of Modernism Part 2: How'd we get here?

Empty pews (wikicommons)

In my post, Visions of Modernism Part 1: Fátima & sins of the flesh, I reviewed how, when Our Lady of Fatima warned Jacinta, one of the three shepherd children,

The sins which cause most souls to go to hell are the sins of the flesh.

As discussed in the post, the difference between the sinful state of 1917 and today is one of scale not kind, with that scale created by the levers of technology that today dispenses "scandal" with neither limits nor cessation. Abortion comes in a pill. Pornography is carried in one's pocket.

While of a kind, albeit on a vast scale, we have also changed the degree of sin. Contraception makes even conjugial sex sinful. Pornography entices, then numbs its viewers to the despicable and cruel, and ruins real intimacy. Advertising leverages our concupiscence, targeting even "the little ones." We carry instruments of sin in our pockets, and our educators, politicians, and professionals are "scandalous," not from the sin they lead others to, but for the clicks and page views it yields.

Sin has always been the rule and not the exception, but within our lifetimes it has gone from quiet to loud, from hushed to celebrated, from unspoken to the entirely public.

Where are we now?

I heard an interesting statistic, that the percentage of professed atheists of 1970 in America, 3%, is now up to 4%. You'd think it'd be far higher, until you realize that most of the other 96%, who, to some extent profess belief in a higher power, or "spirituality," don't believe in the living God.

The sociological paper, "Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference," attributes the decline in denominational faith to decline in trust in institutions, both secular and religious and to growth in "personal autonomy" in recent generations. The reference to "personal autonomy is closer to the truth, but only as an observation and not a causal explanation:

"how valuing personal autonomy generally and autonomy in the sphere of sex and drugs specifically explain generational differences..."

According to the authors, changes in "attitudes regarding sex and drugs" resulting from the1960s "culture shock" has led to divergent political identification, left and right, which then impacts religious affiliation. The authors present data that show that since 1990, self-identified liberals and moderates have increasingly stated "no religious preference," while degrees of self-identified conservatives have shown moderate increases in that identification. Political "moderates" demonstrate the highest divergence, trending similarly with "slightly conservative" to a strong divergence upward starting in the 1990s.

There are a number of problems with aligning political and religious preferences, and the authors get into rather impressive statistical analysis to accommodate political preference change over time. Still, "moderate" in 1972 is vastly different from whatever that may mean today. The label carries no particular meaning other than political ambiguity, which regularly swings left and right. To quote Lynyrd Skynryd, "Watergate does not bother me." Nor did it when, in the 1970s I identified as a liberal Democrat.

But the author's real aim is to show that "political affiliation" and not "secularization" has led to the significant increase in the "nones" category of those professing no religious affiliation. Consistent with the statistic I heard regarding unchanging percentages of self-proclaimed atheists, most of these "nones" cling to some degree of spirituality.

The authors' point is that longstanding sociological explanations of growing non-religiosity as the result of "secularization," itself the result of "modernization," cannot explain the growing numbers of "nones" who still believe in some kind of god. The argument is, literally, academic:

Secularization may have once been a rather specific set of hypotheses, but over time its meaning has defused to the point where almost any downtrend in a religious indicator counts as evidence of it. We take a rather textbook slant on it here, stipulating that for secularization to explain the rise of the “nones,” the sequence must accord with the original theory. First, modernization induces people to lose faith in God and religion. Then, as religion is no longer meaningful, they stop identifying with it.

They state that the "classic version" of the secularization hypothesis is that "modernization, reason, and science would banish traditional explanations of the material world," thereby replacing religion. In their view, that the "nones" maintain religiosity negates the hypothesis.

The authors explain away the decline in liberal church attendance to "alienation and not action," i.e., people just aren't interested in going to church (alienation) but still maintain their religious beliefs (no action). In their conclusion, however, the authors fully reveal themselves,

If some churches were to diversify their message, appealing to issues beyond sexual politics, perhaps the alienated liberals might think about church again.

Well, the authors don't consult Scripture. If they did, they would understand that belief in sexual "autonomy" is entirely inconsistent with God's instruction, so churches that "appeal to issues beyond sexual politics" -- i.e, churches that embrace abortion, homosexuality -- necessarily preach only parts of the Gospel, or reinterpret its inconvenient parts to suit their politics.

No wonder these churches have empty pews.

"Empty" pews

When pews are filled, they are filled with sinners. Every empty pew is a marker for an unrepentant sinner. There is no confusion about this in orthodox teaching.

I'd say that most of those absent from church simply don't think about it except when asked in a survey. And those dropping denominational identify but who actively maintain belief in God, as per our academic surveys, are likely finding their spiritual solace well away from a Bible, say in the "spirituality" section of the book store (with its flurry of books on Gnosticism), healing crystals, TV shows on witches, and meditation fads, and not in Christian worship.

The problem facing our leftist evangelicals is that in today's world there is nothing left to give to God. Caesar has it all. Why bother going to church to hear affirmations of homosexuality and abortion when it is preached everywhere else? Our friends in the academy miss that "holy" means "set apart," and when a church merely regurgitates the rest of society's messages, there is nothing holy in it.

It's a kind of mass-cognitive dissonance, an attempt to affirm belief without actually believing, or, at a minimum, not aligning choices and behaviors to that belief. The easy way out of cognitive dissonance is to simply ignore the more bothersome source of dissonance, which releases the contradiction. If the Church considers homosexuality a sin, it is far easier to affirm one's homosexuality, or, say, that of one's children, by denying the Church's teaching on it.

However, as our academic observers encountered, people don't easily walk away from faith. As the Catechism states,

In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given expression to their quest for God in their religious beliefs and behavior: in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth. These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being (CCC 28)

Here we see why 1) atheism is flat; and 2) non-denominational belief in God has doubled over the last thirty years: 1) man is a spiritual, religious being; and 2) since sin is multi-generational, we find the downward spiral of "autonomy" despite its contradictions with a truly spiritual life.

How did we get here?

Outside the reference to "1960s cultural shock," none of the above, from our academic friends nor my criticism of them, explains how we got here. Political alignment certainly does not.

Go watch an edgy 1950s movie, and you will see the seeds of the supposed cultural shock that followed the next decade. Popular culture was well into sex, alcohol, and anti-establishmentarianism before the hippies. I'd argue that hippie culture had little impact upon suburban white morals, and, like many radical movements, the mundane ever trumps the revolutionary ambition. When in 1906 Sinclair Lewis published "The Jungle," he expected to spark a socialist revolution against capitalism and privilege, and all he got was a new Federal law the empowered the meatpacking trusts. "I aimed at the public's heart," he lamented, "and by accident I hit it in the stomach." As for my childhood, all the hippies gave to me was the Partridge Family and bell-bottoms.

Over time, of course, radicalism can dilute culture and muddy the waters, at which point a stronger counter-reaction either fights it off or it escalates and permanently infests larger society. By the early 1980s when I went to college, the radicals had taken over the academy, and popular culture was overrun by sexual imagery and general apostasy, and anyone who pointed it out was pariah.

Yet Christianity persists. Judeo-Christian morality yet runs our legal system and ethical beliefs, and love for neighbor and charity for the other are esteemed. Only now, we want the rewards of faith without the burdens of piety. Now we get to affirm our spirituality even with a plank in the eye. Something happened to cause it, and it's not cultural or political.

The triggers of politics and culture are mechanical. The American Revolution followed and did not create pamphleteering. God chose the Roman period to evangelize the world for its connectedness in roads, language, rule, and law. Pornography eclipsed its stigma with the internet. The most damaging corruption of faith, however, is not from politics, popular culture, or even pornography, it is from the radical destruction of family through the re-definition of procreation and advance in the mechanical tools needed to implement it.

In 1930, the Anglican Church approved use of birth control for married couples. The declaration wasn't so much a sanction as a surrender to the new industrial product, latex, which allowed for mass-production of condoms. Following World War II, condom use skyrocketed and the "rubber" became culturally intact. By 1960, when the "pill" was unleashed commercially, the idea of "birth control" was hence and firmly entrenched in science, politics, and industry. Doing so, it transformed abortion from an act of desperation to just another form of birth control.

The "autonomy" our academics say has produced lower church attendance is only possible with birth control. Of course the feminist movement preceded birth control -- or did it? Actually, the term, "birth control" was promulgated by the author of the abortion industry, Margaret Sanger, who was far more feminist than suffragette. In removing reproduction from sex, Sanger and her movement objectified its natural product, the fetus, rendering it an optional, if annoying by-product of fornication. From "birth control" we proceed directly to mass abortion, divorce, homosexuality, adultery, etc., and, we learn, church non-attendance.

Again, none of these sins were invented by the moderns. We have, however, escalated them in both scale and degree so as to be the default cultural setting, which then isolates and stigmatizes the Church for its stand against them.

Or is it secularism after all? Pius IX and "The Syllabus of Errors"

As noted above, the core thesis of the study, "No Religious Preference," is that political shifts and not "secularization" have driven the "nones" and less church attendance. By secularization, the authors mean, essentially, modernism, which they call "modernization" -- that reason and science can explain the world.

In the 1864 "The Syllabus of Errors," Pius IX distinguished between "absolute rationalism," which denies "all action of God upon man and the world," and "Moderate Rationalism," which holds that "human reason is placed on a level with religion itself."

An honest atheist would adhere to the error of "absolute rationalism." There being relative few (4%), modern America instead consists of "moderate rationalists" who aren't willing to deny God, but who aren't all that fanatic about him, either. Here we have the error of "Latitudinarianism." Hitting upon the modern American ethos of relativism, Pius IX described it in 1864:

Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.

Most would equate the statement with the First Amendment to the Bill or Rights, but the error isn't one of conscience, but of one's soul. Pius followed that error with,

Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation.

The relativist isn't fanatic about anything except himself, and, above all else, "Don't judge me." Oh, and, "I'm a good person," so shut up. And, "Oh, and keep your rosaries out of our ovaries." People cling to sin and will rationalize anything to justify it. No, my friends, we don't have a political problem keeping people from the pews, we have, as they say, trouble of Biblical proportions.

Pius IX had a long, hard look at modernism, and he saw it coming on hard. In Blog:Visions of Modernism Part 3: Prophesies & warnings I will review how Piux IX and some other of the greatest figures in Catholic history, Saint Anthony Mary Claret, and Saint Pius X, saw the coming modernism and its devastations. Whatever Our Lady warned about at Fatima, she saw it coming, too.

Sept 21, 2024 by Michael

St. Joseph, pray for us!

Here to go back to Blog roll

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