{"id":3357,"date":"2015-06-18T14:36:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T18:36:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/66.147.242.160\/~stumbli4\/?p=3357"},"modified":"2015-06-18T14:36:56","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T18:36:56","slug":"pope-francis-isnt-against-modernism-hes-against-modernity-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/?p=3357","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis Isn’t Against Modernism, He’s Against Modernity Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The new beautiful FrancisLand where everything is equal<\/p><\/div>\n

At FirstThings R.R. Reno has an unexpected twist on the Pope’s new Global Warming encyclical, ‘Laudato Sii.’\u00a0 It’s the most anti-modernist <\/a>papal letter since Piux IX!<\/p>\n

C<\/span>ommentators are sure to make the false claim that Pope Francis has aligned the Church with modern science. They\u2019ll say this because he endorses climate change. But that\u2019s a superficial reading of Laudato Si<\/em>. In this encyclical, Francis expresses strikingly anti-scientific, anti-technological, and anti-progressive sentiments. In fact, this is perhaps the most anti-modern encyclical since the Syllabus of Errors<\/em>, Pius IX\u2019s haughty 1864 dismissal of the conceits of the modern era.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Haughty?<\/p>\n

Francis describes the root of our problem as a failure to affirm God as Creator. Because we do not orient our freedom toward acknowledging God, the Father, we\u2019re drawn into the technological project. We seek to subdue and master the world so that it can serve our needs and desires, thus treating \u201cother living beings as mere objects subjected to arbitrary human domination.\u201d By contrast, if we acknowledge God as Creator, we can receive creation as a gift and see that \u201cthe ultimate purpose of other creatures is not found in us.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, without a theocentric orientation, we adopt the anthropocentric presumption that we are at the center of reality. This tempts us to treat nature\u2014and other human beings\u2014as raw material to do with as we wish. For Francis, \u201ca spirituality which forgets God as all-powerful and Creator is not acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, God is exactly what modernity has forgotten, which means that it too is \u201cnot acceptable\u201d\u2014exactly Pius IX\u2019s conclusion. The Syllabus of Errors<\/em> is exquisitely succinct. Laudato Si<\/em> is verbose. But in a roundabout way Francis makes his own case against the modern world.<\/p>\n

One of the signal achievements of modernity has been the development of a scientific culture. It is now global in scope. In all likelihood it will serve as the unifying worldview that will undergird any future global consensus. At one point Francis calls for \u201cone plan for the whole world.\u201d If this comes to pass, the scientists and technocrats will formulate and administer it. The authoritarian consensus about global warming that actively suppressed dissent, as Climategate revealed, is a case in point.<\/p>\n

Although he endorses the consensus view about global warming, in what may be an internal contradiction Francis describes \u201cthe scientific and experimental method\u201d itself<\/em> as part of the problem. It \u201cis already a technique of possession, mastery, and transformation.\u201d There\u2019s not the slightest suggestion in Laudato Si<\/em> that the modern scientist contemplates or savors the truths of nature. Science disenchants, measures, dissects, and otherwise prepares the world for us to dominate and control.<\/p>\n

T<\/span>echnology is even worse. For nearly two hundred years, \u201cprogress\u201d in the West has largely mean ever-expanding technological achievement from steam ships to trains to cars to the jet airplane. This has a creation-denying, God-denying logic. Technology seeks \u201ca lordship over all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Francis allows that science and technology can lead to useful innovations, crucial medicines, and a kind of beauty in airplanes and skyscrapers. One assumes he endorses the use of technology to meet the challenges of global climate change, uses that will amount to an unprecedented attempt to manage and manipulate the earth\u2019s ecosystem. But it remains dark and destructive. \u201cTechnology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So runaway Godless science has been destructive.\u00a0 Without God’s guidance it’s become a monster.<\/p>\n

Another feature of modernity and its faith in progress has been a political commitment to liberty, equality, and fraternity. To be modern is to believe that, for all our flaws, Western societies are more democratic, more egalitarian, and more inclusive than any in history. This is not the Pope\u2019s view. The West is rapacious. He quotes one source approvingly: \u201cTwenty per cent of the world\u2019s population consumes resources at a rate that robs the poor nations and future generations of what they need to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

In effect, the present world system created by European and North American modernity\u2014the world made possible by Newton, Locke, Rousseau, Ricardo, Kant, Pasteur, Einstein, Keynes, and countless other architects of modern science, economics, and political culture\u2014is an abomination. Francis never quite says that. But this strong judgment is implied in his many fierce denunciations of the current global order. It destroys the environment, oppresses the multitudes, and makes us blind to the beauty of creation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So in addition to deadly science and technology, freedom has run amok and created a monstrous oligarchy of businessmen who enslave and deprive.\u00a0 They must be reined-in.<\/p>\n

I<\/span> must report an odd, disoriented feeling when I finished reading Laudato Si<\/em>. Since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has adopted a largely affirming attitude toward Western modernity. John Paul II denounced the culture of death and Benedict XVI spoke of the dictatorship of relativism. But in their teaching it was clear that they intended these as necessary criticisms to restore the religious and moral basis for modernity\u2019s positive achievements.<\/p>\n

Pope Francis seems to be changing course. Laudato Si<\/em> does not explain how modern science can recover a sense of humility and wonder, nor does it lay down a natural-law framework for the proper development of technology. There\u2019s no application of Catholic social doctrine to help us think in a disciplined way about how to respond to environmental threats, or how to reform global capitalism. That would have reflected the Gaudium et Spes <\/em>agenda as carried forward by the last two popes.<\/p>\n

Instead, Francis has penned a cri de coeur<\/em>, a dark reflection on the systemic evils of modernity. Like the prophet Ezekiel, Pope Francis sees perversion and decadence in a global system dominated by those who consume and destroy. The only answer is repentance, \u201cdeep change,\u201d and a \u201cbold cultural revolution.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

‘Revolution’ is key to understanding Pope Francis.<\/p>\n

If Francis continues in this trajectory, Catholicism will circle back to its older, more adversarial relationship with modernity. In the nineteenth century, the Church regarded modernity\u2019s failure to acknowledge God as damning. It led to usurpations of authority, disrespect for hierarchy, and other signs of anthropocentric self-regard. Francis\u2019s concerns are different. He\u2019s worried about the poor, environmental disasters, and the complacent rich indifferent to both. But his analysis is the same, and he shares a similar dire, global view of modernity as the epitome of godless sin.<\/p>\n

Yet modernity has changed, which is why so few readers of Laudato Si<\/em> will think of Pius IX when they read Francis. Today\u2019s progressives are often critical of the West, and in that sense critical of \u201cprogress.\u201d Europeans can be hysterical about genetically modified food. They have renounced nuclear energy, the only feasible large-scale alternative to a hydrocarbon-based energy system. Democracy was the signal political aspiration of modernity, but the EU is a post-national political project, a technocratic, post-democratic project. Here in the United States, many are now educated to believe that the history of the West is one long story of oppression and injustice. Optimism has waned, which means that the pope\u2019s pessimism may be received warmly.<\/p>\n

P<\/span>erhaps, therefore, the most accurate thing to say is that Francis offers a postmodern reading of Gaudium et Spes<\/em> and Vatican II\u2019s desire to be open to the modern world. He seems to propose to link the Catholic Church with a pessimistic post-humanist Western sentiment rather than the older, confident humanism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The writer of this piece conflates modernity with modernism.\u00a0 Modernity simply means now.\u00a0 Modernism, as explained by Pope Pius X, places individual experience and sentiment over doctrine.\u00a0 The Church has never had an adversarial relationship with the present, but in his new encyclical, Pope Francis seems to.\u00a0 He wants to erase the foundations of modern life in the hopes that he’ll bring a more just result.\u00a0 But there is no justice in Communism, only thuggish thievery and lies.<\/p>\n

Such is the pretense of post-modern and socialist philosophy which dominates our universities and the UN.\u00a0 The pope shares this and believes that the Church can be conformed to assist and supplement the same revolutionary goals.\u00a0 He doesn’t see that Communism and oligarchic ‘capitalism’ are two sides of the same modern coin. Neither resemble the free happy life of Christendom before the Enlightenment, but Communism is clearly worse, though somewhat more ‘equitable,’ if you share that infamous priority.<\/p>\n

It’s correct to say that Pope Francis dislikes modernity, because he is a radical.\u00a0 He is keen to tear down the existing social order but, since he has contempt for the natural laws and rights, for freedom and property, he proposes no realistic structure to take it’s place.\u00a0 He is the ‘ideologue’ which he constantly rails against.\u00a0 He is bent only on destruction, in the name of mankind and God of course.<\/p>\n

As far as the sentimental Modernist corruption of the Faith which Pope’s Pius IX and X decried, Pope Francis clearly embraces it.\u00a0 In his constant pleas for closeness, tenderness and mercy, his demagoguery about the poor and suffering, and his embrace of all religions and philosophies on behalf of his ’cause;’ he is exactly what we’ve been warned about.<\/p>\n

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At FirstThings R.R. Reno has an unexpected twist on the Pope’s new Global Warming encyclical, ‘Laudato Sii.’\u00a0 It’s the most anti-modernist papal letter since Piux IX! Commentators are sure to make the false claim that Pope Francis has aligned the Church with modern science. They\u2019ll say this because he endorses climate change. But that\u2019s a …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[281,484,392,483,19],"class_list":["post-3357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-encyclical","tag-first-things","tag-modernism","tag-pius-ix","tag-pope-francis"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3357"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3384,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3357\/revisions\/3384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumblingblock.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}