A NEW APOLOGETICS: BISHOP BARRON’S YOUTH SYNOD INTERVENTION
Jesus’
encounter with two erstwhile disciples on the road to Emmaus provides
a beautiful template for the Church’s work of accompaniment across
the ages. The Lord walks with the couple, even as they move away from
Jerusalem, which is to say, spiritually speaking, in the wrong
direction. He does not commence with a word of judgment, but rather
with attention and quiet encouragement. Jesus continues to listen,
even as they recount, accurately enough, all the data having to do
with him. But then, knowing that they lack the interpretive pattern
that will make sense of the data, he upbraids them (“Oh, how
foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets
spoke!”), and then he lays out the form (“beginning with Moses
and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in
all the Scriptures.”). He listens with love, and he speaks with
force and clarity.
Innumerable
surveys and studies over the past ten years have confirmed that young
people frequently cite intellectual reasons when asked what has
prompted them to leave the Church or lose confidence in it. Chief
among these are the convictions that religion is opposed to science
or that it cannot stand up to rational scrutiny, that its beliefs are
outmoded, a holdover from a primitive time, that the Bible is
unreliable, that religious belief gives rise to violence, and that
God is a threat to human freedom. I can verify, on the basis of
twenty years of ministry in the field of online evangelization, that
these concerns are crucial stumbling blocks to the acceptance of the
faith among young people.
What
is vitally needed today, as an aspect of the accompaniment of the
young, is a renewed apologetics and catechesis. I realize that in
some circles within the Church, the term apologetics is suspect,
since it seems to indicate something rationalistic, aggressive,
condescending. I hope it is clear that arrogant proselytizing has no
place in our pastoral outreach, but I hope it is equally clear that
an intelligent, respectful, and culturally-sensitive explication of
the faith (“giving a reason for the hope that is within us”) is
certainly a desideratum. There is a consensus among pastoral people
that, at least in the West, we have experienced a crisis in
catechesis these last fifty years. That the faith has not been
effectively communicated was verified by the most recent religious
landscape study, from the Pew Research Center in America. It
indicated that, among the major religions, Catholicism was second to
last in passing on its traditions. Why has it been the case, over the
past several decades, that young people in our own Catholic secondary
schools have read Shakespeare in literature class, Homer in Latin
class, Einstein in physics class, but, far too often, superficial
texts in religion? The army of our young who claim that religion is
irrational is a bitter fruit of this failure in education.
Therefore,
what would a new apologetics look like? First, it would arise from
the questions that young people spontaneously ask. It would not be
imposed from above but would rather emerge organically from below, a
response to the yearning of the mind and the heart. Here it would
take a cue from the method of St. Thomas Aquinas. The austere texts
of the great theological master in point of fact emerged from the
lively give-and-take of the quaestiones disputatae that
stood at the heart of the educational process in the medieval
university. Thomas was deeply interested in what young people were
really asking. So should we.
Secondly,
a new apologetics should look deep and long into the question of the
relationship between religion and science. For many people today,
scientific and rational are simply equivalent or co-extensive terms.
And therefore, since religion is obviously not science, it must be
irrational. Without for a moment denigrating the sciences, we have to
show that there are non-scientific and yet eminently rational paths
that conduce toward knowledge of the real. Literature, drama,
philosophy, the fine arts—all close cousins of religion—not only
entertain and delight; they also bear truths that are unavailable in
any other way. A renewed apologetics ought to cultivate these
approaches.
Thirdly,
our apologetics and catechesis should walk the via
pulchritudinis, as Pope Francis characterized it in Evangelii
Gaudium. Especially in our postmodern cultural context, commencing
with the true and the good—what to believe and how to behave—is
often counter-indicated, since the ideology of self-invention is so
firmly established. However, the third transcendental, the beautiful,
often proves a more winsome, less threatening, path. And part of the
genius of Catholicism is that we have so consistently embraced the
beautiful—in song, poetry, architecture, painting, sculpture, and
liturgy. All of this provides a powerful matrix for evangelization.
And as Hans Urs von Balthasar argued, the most compelling beauty of
all is that of the saints. I have found a good deal of evangelical
traction in presenting the lives of these great friends of God,
somewhat in the manner of a baseball coach who draws young adepts
into the game by showing them the play of some of its greatest
practitioners.
When
Jesus explained himself to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, their
hearts began to burn within them. The Church must walk with young
people, listen to them with attention and love, and then be ready
intelligently to give a reason for the hope that is within us. This,
I trust, will set the hearts of the young on fire.
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire