Paradigms in peril - cultural change in Catholicism - Column

Commonweal, Oct 7, 1994 by Sidney Callahan

Are we undergoing a foundational change in the world and the life of the church? Bishop Kenneth Untener, an especially acute theological observer, thinks so. He describes the cultural changes that resulted in the event of Vatican II as a fundamental movement in which "the great plates beneath the church have shifted." He claims that while something massive is going on, we're all still trying to figure out what it is.

Aha, thought I, this not only sounds right but I think I have a few clues as to what's been happening to us. My own insights spring from a long career marked by far too much intellectual infighting. Liberalleaning Catholic writers, in case you didn't know, receive regular doses of "hate mail," or "fraternal correction," filled with messages such as, "Don't you see, Sidney, that you're really a bad Catholic?" or "Shame, shame on you for betraying the faith." Slam, bang, wham!

As I recoil from these assaults, I'm often struck by the fact that the particular disagreement over an issue (women's ordination, contraception, homosexuality, just war, or whatever) is secondary to far deeper and more fundamental differences. Unfortunately, opponents in today's church can appear to inhabit different mental and psychological worlds.

Catholics coping with tectonic cultural shifts become mired in large metaphysical meta-debates or paradigm-clashes. Surface conflicts reveal deeper underlying rifts over how we should arrive at our convictions about what is really "real," or God's own truth.

Take the growing acceptance by thinkers and theologians of the view that dynamic processes and constant change are present in every domain of life, including the Christian faith. In process thinking all the old familiar posed photographs in the treasured album come to life and turn into moving pictures. Things don't stay put anymore, and never did.

Along with the discovery of constant change and evolutionary development there's a new realization that all entities exist within dynamic systems and interconnected ecological networks. No man (or religious faith) is an island. Even distinct categories and definitions possess "fuzzy" boundaries. Context alters content. Things don't come in tidy packages, and never did.

Then there's the even more troubling realization that human beings are always limited by their particular historical context. People can only subjectively construct and interpret perceived reality within their particular bounded horizons, always operating with partial perspectives. Things are now and always have been interpreted, with plenty of revisions reworking the absolute certainties of yesteryear.

Once you get the message that reality is constituted by dynamic changing systemic forces, within ecological webs of life, limited by subjective interpretations, one's naive confidence in the "real" world and timeless faith tends to wobble. Panic, anxiety, vertigo, and intellectual seasickness may threaten one's deepest convictions. In reaction, some believers vigorously reject any "turn to the subject," and resolutely retreat from the relativistic dangers of "process thinking." They re-dedicate themselves fervently to universal objective truths: eternally unchanging, distinctly clear, and absolutely certain.

If other people don't accept these truths, too bad for them. Either the recalcitrant ones cannot reason properly or they refuse in their pride to submit to the authority of those commissioned by God to pass on divinely revealed truths. Fundamentalism comes in many guises but we know it when we see it.

A refined fundamentalist critique of process thinking forecasts the inevitability of its decline into moral relativism, if not nihilism. Once you grant the reality of constant change, the influence of context, and subjective interpretation, won't you end up a complete skeptic about accepting any truths? Why isn't my subjective perception of truth as good as yours? Finally in full-blown epidemics of moral skepticism persons will find themselves too trapped within an imperial protean self to make any moral commitments, or to be faithful to anything. Goodby Truth, farewell to the sovereignty of the Good. One more culture goes down the drain.

Well, O.K., who isn't afraid of creeping moral decadence? I for one don't want to end up in Therapy Land where "being comfortable" with your choice is more important than making a valid or good decision. As a psychologist I'm supersensitive to the accusations (too often justified) of the prevalence of psychobabble and the triumph of the therapeutic.

However, I deny the charge that the turn to the subject and a recognition of process, systems, context, and interpretation must inevitably lead to moral relativism and a denial of objective reality. Academic and rigorous psychological inquiries into subjective processes of development do not end up endorsing subjective relativism. Yes, science, including the human sciences, do require methods of skeptical doubt, but this critical testing is employed in order to seek general consensus and increasingly objective, valid, and lawful understandings (a justification by doubt?).