The Moral Imagination

In this episode of the Moral Imagination Podcast I speak with Catherine Pakaluk about her book Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth

Over the last 200 years, we have seen a decline in birth rates in the United States and abroad, especially in Western countries. Most European countries are no longer at replacement rates and face serious population decline. Reuters reported that Japan’s population will decline by a staggering 30% in the next fifty years.

In the United States, in the year 1800, the typical woman would have about 7 or 8 children. By 1900 that number was cut in half to 4. By 2000 the number cut in half again to about 2 children, which is just about replacement rate. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the the record-low birthrate in the US, and how increasing numbers of people plan to have no children.

In the midst of declining marriages, childlessness, and low birthrates, Pakaluk studied the increasing minority of women in the Western world who have chosen to have five or more children — the top 5% of childbearing.

Her book is a mix of ethnography, sociology, and economics, and includes a critique of the dominant model of social and economic research.

One thing that stands out with many of the women she interviews is how at some point a shift took place in their attitude — from seeing children as a choice, like a consumer good among other choices, to a different attitude of receptivity and openness to having another child, and then another.

She talks about the many forces that promote small families — the cost of children, overpopulation propaganda, education, feminism, environmentalism, consumerism and more. But Pakaluk emphasizes that encouraging women to have more children cannot be addressed simply by implementing pro-family policies like some countries have tried to do. Good policy is not insignificant — for example in most US states parents who want to send their children to religious schools have to pay twice for school through tax and tuition. But she argues that the real problems go much deeper. They are religious, spiritual, and metaphysical: a vision of life that sees being as good, children as a blessing, and family as essential for a good life.

Pakaluk compares having a large family to running a marathon—except longer, harder, and more fulfilling. Government family policy would be like giving everyone a pair of good running shoes for the marathon. That could help, but it won’t get most people to run. There must be a deeper motivation, and this almost always comes from religious belief and the virtues of faith, hope, the goodness of being, and the value of generosity and sacrifice that come from it.

Themes and Topics we discuss include:

* Demographics and Population Decline

* Family policies

* Feminism

* Education

* Career vs Family and Children

* Conflicting Desires

* Difficulties and Advantages of a Large Family

* The Role of Religious Schools

* Community

* Plausibility Structures

* Consumerism

* Individualism

* Social Pressure

* Religious Freedom

* Fortitude, Patience

* Boys and Girls Sports

* Novak Djokovic and Kobe Bryant

* Voting Patterns

* Climate

* Creation and the Goodness of Being

* and more

Biography

Catherine Ruth Pakaluk (Ph.D, 2010) joined the faculty at the Busch School in the summer of 2016, and is the founder of the Social Research academic area, where she is an Associate Professor of Social Research and Economic Thought. Formerly, she was Assistant Professor and Chair of the Economics Department at Ave Maria University. Her primary areas of research include economics of education and religion, family studies and demography, Catholic social thought and political economy. Dr. Pakaluk is the 2015 recipient of the Acton Institute’s Novak Award, a prize given for “significant contributions to the study of the relationship between religion and economic liberty.”Pakaluk did her doctoral work at Harvard University under Caroline Hoxby, David Cutler, and 2016 Nobel-laureate Oliver Hart. Her dissertation, “Essays in Applied Microeconomics”, examined the relationship between religious ‘fit' and educational outcomes, the role of parental effort in observed peer effects and school quality, and theoretical aspects of the contraceptive revolution as regards twentieth century demographic trends.   Beyond her formal training in economics, Dr. Pakaluk studied Catholic social thought under the mentorship of F. Russell Hittinger, and various aspects of Thomistic thought with Steven A. Long. She is a widely-admired writer and sought-after speaker on matters of culture, gender, social science, the vocation of women, and the work of Edith Stein. She lives in Maryland with her husband Michael Pakaluk and eight children.

Resources

Hannah's Children

Flight from Woman

Neil Postman: Technopoly

Joseph Ratzinger: Homilies on Genesis

On the Jewish - Christian Idea of the Goodness of Being

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Photo Credit: Tyler Follon - Wingman Visuals

In this episode of the Moral Imagination Podcast, I speak with Professor William Easterly of New York University about his work in development economics, and the problems of technocracy and social engineering of the poor.

Easterly worked at the World Bank from 1985-2001 and began to be troubled by a number of things, including how aid is given without much concern about how it is distributed and managed thus subsidizing bad governance and harming the poor. We discuss Peter Bauer’s critique of how foreign aid politicizes development and delayed the development of business in Africa, and Bauer’s paradox of aid:

* The countries that need aid — aid will not be effective

* The countries where aid will be effective — do not need aid

But the key problem with the dominant model of development is not simply a lack of efficiency, but the failure to respect the rights and agency of poor people. Easterly explains that development projects often result in people being deprived of their property, political rights, and participation and consent in the very projects that are supposed to help them. He discussed the tendency to to trivialize problems in the developing world, and the lack of feedback and market tests in development policy. We discuss how the developing world can often become a a lab for experiments for technocrats and social engineers.

We also talk about Hayek’s Knowledge Problem, a response to Marianna Mazucatto idea of moonshots, and what I call “embedded'“ economics.

We discuss a number of issues including

* “The Debate that Never Happened” - Gunnar Myrdal vs. Friedrich Hayek on development economics

* Social Engineering

* Technocracy and the Hubris of the Technocrat

* Spontaneous Order

* Edmund Burke and Friedrich Hayek

* Soviet 5-year central planning as model for economic development

* Limited Horizons of Humanitarianism— a secular, hollowed out version of Christian love the focuses on material at the expense of personal agency.

* Lack of Accountability

* Material vs. Non-material Needs

* Materialist visions of the human person

* People have a right to consent to their own progress

* Harry Potter novels vs. Mosquito Nets

* Marianna Mazucatto’s ideas of Moonshots

* vs. accidental discovery

* vs opportunity costs

* vs failed social engineering projects

* and the complexity of economics and markets embedded in deep historical, cultural, norms, institutions, and religious foundations.

* How to think about foreign aid and public goods like healthcare, infrastructure, education

* Aid for emergencies vs. aid as answer to chronic poverty

* Institutions of Justice including clear title to land, access to justice in the courts, ability to participate in the formal economy, and free exchange.

* The impact of globalization on manufacturing in the US

* Trade-offs and economic volatility

* The moral rules that are needed for progress to beneficial

* Consent, Self-Determination, Moral Equality

* Attempts to develop Native Americans, US intervention in Philippines etc.

* Material progress is never enough to justify intervention

Biography

William Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University and Co-director of the NYU Development Research Institute, which won the 2009 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge in Development Cooperation Award. He is the author of three books: The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (March 2014), The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006), which won the FA Hayek Award from the Manhattan Institute, and The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001).

He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed academic articles, and has written columns and reviews for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Review of Books, and Washington Post. He has served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Development Economics and as Director of the blog Aid Watch. He is a Research Associate of NBER, and senior fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD). Foreign Policy Magazine named him among the Top 100 Global Public Intellectuals in 2008 and 2009, and Thomson Reuters listed him as one of Highly Cited Researchers of 2014. He is also the 11th most famous native of Bowling Green, Ohio.

Resources

Essay: Friedrich Hayek: “The Use of Knowledge in Society”

Related: Podcast with Obianuju Ekeocha on Ideological Colonialism and Resisting the Cultural Annexation of Africa

Uganda Farmer Story in New York Times

Poverty, Inc. Film

Recommended Reading

Tyranny of Experts William Easterly

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little GoodBuy on Amazon, William Easterly

The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics, Easterly, William R.

Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century

by Obianuju Ekeocha

Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott

Peter Bauer, Equality, The Third World, and Economic Delusion

Angus Deaton The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality

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This episode of the Moral Imagination Podcast is a talk I gave at AmPhil’s Center for Civil Society conference in November, 2023 on the “Rise of the Nones.”   According to Pew Research, those who declare no religious affiliation - None -  are now the largest religious category in the United States.
In this talk I address several overarching reasons for the decline of Christianity and address how five dominant visions of the human person including person as a cog or scourge, transhumanism & transgenderism, plastic anthropology, and the person as a commodity — also play a key role not only in despair and anxiety, but contribute both to the decline of Christian belief and the rise of secularism and pantheism/new paganism.
This talk is a thematic overview and distillation of two longer lectures I give on five false anthropologies and 10 reasons for unbelief and the decline of Christianity. Some of the topics I address include

• Breakdown of the Family - specifically decrease in fatherhood participation, and its impact on religious practice
• Sexual Revolution  - disorients the person and relationships between men and women
• Feminism & Smashing the Patriarchy — “Flight from Woman”
• Egalitarianism and Pantheism - Tocqueville’s prediction of the rise of pantheism in democratic societies
• Technology + Technological Society:

• Practical: use of technology and propaganda
• Theoretical: Empiricist rationality is incoherent and severs relationship between affectivity and reason
• Scientism: vision of a technical solution to evil, sin, suffering

• Humanitarianism and what I call “Almost Christianity”
• Failures of the Church: scandal, corruption, assimilation, and failure to teach and catechize

• Loss of non-linguistic catechesis
• When people are leaving Christianity today, do they know what they are leaving?

•  Confusion about the nature and destiny of the human person and what it means to be an embodied person  

• Plastic Anthropology —malleable based on feelings
• Transhumanism / Transgenderism - combination of biology and technology
• Person as Cog
• Person as Scourge
• Person as Commodity — Everything becomes an object of trade. Del Noce’s concept of Pure Bourgeois

• Conclude with several suggestions to address the loss of faith and confusions over anthropology

• Re-affirm that Being is good and intelligible - Our bodies are good
• Each person is a subject and not simply an object
• Defend Reason and Freedom
• We are embodied and Embedded Persons— our bodies are not accidental

• Thinkers I address include Augusto Del Noce, Joseph Ratzinger, C.S. Lewis, Henri DeLubac, Carrie Gress, Karl Stern, Christopher Palmer, Jaron Lanier, Max Scheler, Joseph Pieper, John Paul II
• See www.themoralimagination.com for book links and related podcasts.

  AmPhil Center For Civil Society - Nonprofit Educational Leader Leading educational provider for nonprofit fundraising learning the Center for Civil Society is the go to for major gifts, campaigns, strategy, and... Time to read 8 minutes Dec 22nd, 2022   AmPhil Rise Of The Nones Nonprofit Conference Nov 7-8 Scottsdale. AZ Leading scholars, philanthropists, and nonprofit leaders will discuss the rise in secularism, decline in church attendance, and other related trends, and... (352 kB) https://amphil.com/event/c4cs-riseofnones/     Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project Religious ‘Nones’ in America: Who They Are and What They Believe 28% of U.S. adults are religiously unaffiliated, describing themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religion. Written by Gregory A. Smith, Patricia Tevington, Justin Nortey, Michael Rotolo, Asta Kallo and Becka A. Alper

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In this episode of the Moral Imagination Podcast I speak with Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta, Ambassador Eduard Habsburg, about his book The Habsburg Way: Seven Rules for Turbulent Times. We discuss a number of themes including some history of the Habsburg Dynasty, the life and death of Blessed Charles of Austria, the last Austro-Hungarian emperor, including the remarkable tradition of the funeral for Habsburg emperors. We also discuss themes of marriage, children, religion, technology, liturgy, and especially the importance of family and tradition to provide rootedness in a time of individualism and “liquid modernity.”  Other themes and topics include:

• Different Visions of Subsidiarity — Catholic Social Teaching vs. European Union
• Decentralization and localism vs. Devolution of power from a central state
• Technocratic Politics
• Alexis de Tocqueville on Individualism and Centralization
• Robert Nisbet on the Quest for Community
• Joseph Ratzinger — What it means to be a Christian
• Liturgy as non-linguistic catechesis
• The Human Person as Embodied and Embedded
• and more

Biography
Ambassador Eduard Habsburg is the Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta.  He is the author of The Habsburg Way. 7 Rules for Turbulent Times from Sophia Press and Dubbie: The Double-Headed Eagle. Full Quiver Publishing, 2020.  You can connect and follow him on Twitter at @EduardHabsburg   X (formerly Twitter) Eduard Habsburg (@EduardHabsburg) on X Ambassador of Hungary to the Holy See and the Sovereign Order of Malta.

Book: THE HABSBURG WAY
https://t.co/vMufBgoJGE

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In this episode of the Moral Imagination Podcast I speak with Seth Kaplan about his book Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society One Zip Code at a Time.  Seth has spent his career working in fragile states around the world — countries that are unstable and prone to violence, war, and political problems. About 10 years ago Seth was increasingly asked if the US was becoming fragile.  As he turned his attention to studying the United States, he concluded was that while the US is not fragile as a country, there are many areas and neighborhoods throughout the country that are very fragile — where poverty rates are high, there is crime, and instability, and social capital, family stability, and economic and educational opportunities are low.  Seth explains that depending on the neighborhood where you live in the United States it can mean a shorter lifespan of over 20 years.   Kaplan speaks about two faces of poverty, material and social, and how they are both a problem of broken relationships.   He argues: “I think the real question you have to ask about the United States we have many things going very well in our country but something has gotten worse in the last couple of generations: the politics, the trust, the social breakdown, the deaths of despair, the health crisis the depression, and the rise of suicides. The big question that we have to ask ourselves is what has changed in our relationships that lead us to have so many social and political problems?” Themes and Topics we discuss include:

• Family Stability
• Social Capital
• Bonding vs. Bridging Social Capital
• Relationships and Community
• The role of religion and religious practice in communities
• Associationalism vs. Individualism vs. Collectivism

  Biography   Seth D. Kaplan is a leading expert on fragile states. He is a Professorial Lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Adviser for the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), and consultant to multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, and OECD as well as developing country governments and NGOs.   Resources

Chris Arnade Podcast on his book Dignity

Communio — Communio is a nonprofit that trains and equips churches to evangelize through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriages, and the family.

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In this episode I speak with Fr. Cajetan Cuddy O.P. about Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophic Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Fr. Robert Edward Brennan, O.P., edited and with an introduction by Fr. Cuddy.

 

Aristotle wrote that “to attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.” We often read psychology because we want to understand ourselves and our behavior- and the behavior of others.  While we don’t normally think of St. Thomas Aquinas as a psychologist, as a serious philosopher, theologian, and student of the human person, St. Thomas gives us deep insight into human psychology — the study of the psyche or soul — our intellect, memory, will, emotions, and our embodied, embedded existence.

Fr. Brennan’s book on Thomistic Psychology provides a good accessible introduction to Aquinas’ reflections on psychology.  As. Fr. Cuddy notes, some of the science in Thomistic Psychology is a bit out of date, but the key principles and ideas are still applicable and provide an important contribution, especially in a time when so many struggle with anxiety, depression, sadness and other mental health challenges.  These have many causes to be sure, but the impact of modern theories of materialism, spiritualism and other reductionist visions of the person makes people even more confused about who they are and how to live well.

One of the ideas central to the work of St. Thomas and Fr. Brennan is the idea of truth — conforming the mind to reality — and how taking truth seriously combined with a solid, non-reductionist philosophy of the person can have practical, positive impact on our mental and psychological health. Thomistic Psychology presents an integrated vision of the person that helps us the better to understand ourselves and others, and provides clear models and practical advice on addressing our problems, how to fight bad habits and build good ones, how to address our emotions, disappointments, and successes, and a roadmap on how to live well.

St. Thomas’ philosophy and pyschology are also very important because he takes our embodiement seriously.  We are not souls in a body or driving around in our body like we drive around in a car. Nor are we simply material beings determined by our neurobiology or genetics. Rather we are embodied persons our physical, moral, spiritual, emotional, and psychological life are intertwined.  What we do and happens to us physically impacts our emotional and mental life and vice versa.  St. Thomas’ suggested remedy for sadness is a perfect of example of his taking our physical and spiritual nature seriously.

We discuss a broad range of topics including:

• What is a person

• Divine Persons, Angelic Persons, Embodied persons

• What it means for human to have a nature.

• What is a soul?

• What is a body?

• Why the body matters

• Free will

• The proper use of the powers of man

• The remedy for saddnes

• St. Thomas on the Senses — sight, touch, hearing etc.

• Memory

• Imagination

• St. Thomas idea of self-creation

• Human formation

• The person as passive and active agent

• The role of happiness

• Evil as a privation

• Why we need to be careful about the music we listen to, the movies we watch, what we think about 

• Spiritual and/or Religious

• The beginning of love according to John Paul II

• Faith, Hope, Charity

• How the Christian life is not to become an angel — but a human being fully integrated.

• Liturgy

• Fasting

• Pray with our Bodies

Find show notes and links to books we discuss at www.themoralimagination.com

Biography:

Fr. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., is a priest of the Dominican Province of St. Joseph. He serves as the general editor of the Thomist Tradition Series, and he is co-author of Thomas and the Thomists: The Achievement of St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters. Fr. Cuddy has a B.A. from Franciscan University, a M.Div./S.T.B., The Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception, a S.T.L., The Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception and his doctorate, a S.T.D. from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.  He writes and lectures extensively on the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Thomist Tradition. Some of his selected publications can be found here.

Fr. Cuddy also lectures for the Thomistic Institute.  For an excellent introduction to the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas I recommend the Thomistic Institutenstitute.org/ and their series Aquinas 101

The late Fr. Robert Edward Brennan, O.P. was a Dominican Friar, professor, and the author of numerous books and articles including Thomistic Psychology and The History of Psychology: A Thomistic Reading, both published recently by Cluny Media.

 

Cluny Media

Thomist Tradition Series

Cluny Media

 

thomisticinstitute.org

Thomistic Institute

The Thomistic Institute exists to promote Catholic truth in our contemporary world by strengthening the intellectual formation of Christians at universities, in the Church, and in the wider public square.

 

aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org

Aquinas 101

Aquinas 101 is a video course project of the Thomistic Institute, located in Washington, DC. The Thomistic Institute exists to promote Catholic truth in our contemporary world by strengthening the intellectual formation of Christians at universities, in the Church, and in the wider public square.

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In this episode I speak with Professor Vigen Gurioan about the revised and expanded edition of his book Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child’s Imagination. We discuss the power of stories, how they help can us develop self-knowledge, and how fairy tales and classic stories are essential for education and moral formation for children — and for adults. Fairy tales and classic stories can impress upon us profound philosophical and often theological insights about life and death, the good and beautiful, the value of courage and nobility, and importance of self-sacrifice for love. Stories, themes, and thinkers we we discuss include

• Hans Christian Anderson

• The Little Mermaid

• Beauty and the Beast

• Grimm’s Fairy Tales

• George McDonald

• Pinocchio, honor, honesty, and the responsibility of children to their parents

• The Ugly Duckling, courage, and the desire for beauty

• The Wind and the Willows, Charlotte’s Web, and friendship of equality and friendship of mentors

• Good Wishes and Bad Wishes

• Joseph Pieper and Dietrich von Hildebrand on joy as a the superabundant fruit of love and self-gift

• Charles Dickens

• C.S. Lewis

• Edmund Burke

• Aristotle on Friendship and more

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In this episode I speak with heart surgeon, Dr. Philip Ovadia MD, about metabolic health, diet, science, cholesterol, insulin resistance, the US government food pyramid, Ancel Keys and the cholesterol - saturated fat -heart disease hypothesis. We discuss medical education, health insurance, scientism, and some of the obstacles doctors and scientists face with “group think.” Dr Ovadia tells his story of how lost 100 pounds changed everything he learned about fat and food. He explains that while half of the patients who have heart attacks or heart surgery have normal levels of cholesterol, over 90% have insulin resistance. He argues that metabolic health is not only important for heart health, but for mental health, and plays a key role in preventing cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. We discuss a number of themes including

• Gary Taubes: The Case Sugar and Why We Get Fat

• Problems of Crony Capitalism and Subsidies

• How the Government Food Pyramid makes you fat

• Metabolic Health and Covid

• The Campbell Effect and how bad science has dominated medicine

• Weston Price

• Insulin Resistance

• Diabetes

• Saturated Fat

• Pharmacuetical Industry and Medication

• Seed Oils

• Health Insurance and the need for new models

• The connection between metabolic health and mental health

This episode and podcast is for informational purposes and does not provide medical advice.

Biography

Dr. Philip Ovadia MD is a board certified cardiac surgeon and founder of Ovadia Heart Health. He grew up in New York and graduated from the accelerated Pre-Med/Med progra at the Pennsylvannia State University and Jefferson Medical College. This was followed by residency in General Surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry at New Jersey and a fellowship in Cardio-thoracic Surgery at Tufts-New England Medical School. Learn more about Dr. Ovadia at www.ovadiahearthealth.com

Resources

See books below

Campbell’s Law

Dave Feldman on Cholesterol

Podcast with Jay Richards on Fasting and the Ketogenic Diet

Podcast with Diana Rodgers on Food, Meat and Health

Podcast with James Madden on Embodied, Embedded Persons

Podcast with Joel Salatin on Food and Farming

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In this episode I speak with Titus Techera about Dune, Bladerunner, science fiction, dystopian film, technocratic view of humanity, and the formative power of science fiction on the imagination. We discuss contemporary technological society, social breakdown, loneliness, men and women and decline in marriage, technology and trans-humanism/ transgenderism, and the predictive power of dystopian film. We talk about what it means to be human and the relationship between digital technology and humanity. Titus argues that much of sport, military, modern manliness and excellence has been reduced to science and creatures of technology.

He argues that one of the “catalysts for science fiction stories is disappointment with the world. The dead hand of the past is too powerful. People are always a problem; tradition gets in the way of radical innovation. Science fiction is aware of the problem of our decadence, but technical daring can solve it.” And yet in the science fiction societies like Bladerunner there is a wealthy technical class amidst brutality, societal decline where everyone has lost their humanity.

He writes

As with all science fiction set in the near future, Blade Runner is an attempt to make us look at ourselves as though we were strangers to ourselves, allowing for the possibility that serious changes can come suddenly and overcome our beliefs or preferences. Could we end up like Deckard, Harrison Ford’s character, a bounty hunter, or “blade runner?”

We need not embrace this kind of despair, but only need understand its appeal. The social landscape of Blade Runner seems plausible enough. The film presents American cities overrun by crime and poverty while technological corporations become immensely wealthy… A suitably dramatic expression of something we see around us quite often; indeed, perhaps exaggeration is necessary, since we have an excusable, but unfortunate tendency to ignore the misery of American cities.

Themes we discuss include

• Science and scientism,

• Atheism and religion,

• Nihilism and utopianism,

• Social engineering of people,

• Medicine

• Covid pandemic and vaccine mandates

• Tension between scientific progress in digital technology and scientific and technological stagnation in other areas.

• Jordan Peterson

• Contemporary interest in stoicism

• Utiltarianism and hedonism

• Sports and Science

• Spiderman

   

Biography

Titus Techera is the executive director of the American Cinema Foundation, host of the ACF podcasts, a film critic for Law & Liberty and the Acton Institute, contributor to Modern Age, columnist for Return and European Conservative, and editor-in-chief of PostModern Conservative. Techera studied liberal arts at Bard College Berlin and political science at the University of Bucharest and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

Resources

Titus Techera essay: The Tale of Two Dunes

Titus Techera essay on Bladerunner

Follow Titus on Twitter

Listen to the ACF Film Podcast

Titus Techera Substack

 

Titus Techera on Novak Djokovic, Excellence, and Covid Rules

Caveats: These science fiction books and films because they deal with dystopian futures and social decadence have material that is not suitable for children.

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Pope Benedict XVI / Joseph Ratzinger passed away on December 31 at the age of 95 years old. His writing and teaching have been a major influence on my thinking. So in honor of his memory and gratitude for his example, this episode is a talk I gave on Pope Benedict XVI on Five Crises of Culture and the Intellectual sources of Secularism and the New Evangelization. I go through five intellectual themes/crises that Benedict identifies in the West “where the roots of Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of faith due to secularization."

• Truth and the Dictatorship of Relativism

• Reason

• Progress

• Freedom

• Beauty

I examine how he describes and explains the challenges of our age; how he addresses each of them on their own terms, and the proposes a Gospel response. One element of the crisis of faith is grounded in intellectual sources. We think, and too often live, like secularists and adopt often without thinking a secular framework. But secularism is not neutral. As Benedict argues, “We must develop and adult faith.”

An "adult" faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from truth. We must develop this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - that creates unity and is fulfilled in love.”

In this talk I provide a lot of quotes and references. You can find show notes, links, and outline of the talk at www.themoralimagination.com

Resources

See the outline / handout of the talk below.

Also see Amazon links to books I refer to in the talk below. I also provide Amazon link to the encyclicals, but you can get all the encyclicals for free at vatican.va

There a lot of books listed and if you are unsure where to start I would suggest you begin with the following:

• Books: Jesus of Nazareth Vol 1, Milestones, and Last Testament

• Collection of more complex essays: Values in a Time of Upheaval

• Encyclicals Spe Salvi and Deus Caritas Est

• Short Readings: Here are some links

Homily before the Conclave — “Dictatorship of Relativsm”

Regensberg Address — on the crisis of reason in the west

Cardinal Ratzinger on Europe’s Crisis of Culture at Subiaco

 

Benedict XVI Paris Lecture Meeting with Representatives from the World of Culture

 

Additional Links mentioned in talk

Roger Scruton: Beauty and Desecration  

Roger Scruton: Kitsch and the Modern Predicament 

I Grateful to Authenticum and Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish for the invitation to speak and for recording and providing me with the audio of this lecture. You can learn more about the Authenticum Lecture Series

 OUTLINE/HANDOUT Benedict XVI—Five Crises of Culture and the Intellectual sources of Secularism and the New Evangelization

Michael Matheson Miller

The New Evangelization

Re-Propose the Gospel "to those regions awaiting the first evangelization AND to those regions where the roots of Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of faith due to secularization." Benedict XVI

 

 Theme:  Think Like Christians

Focus on Intellectual roots of secularization and the crisis of faith and the work of Benedict XVI We must not approach the social and political order in a purely secular manner.  Benedict is I think a model for new evangelization because he takes the situation of our current time on its own terms and then addresses it in light of reason and the Gospel.

Paul VI: Evangelii Nuntiandi

 "The conditions of the society in which we live oblige all of us therefore to revise methods, to seek by every means to study how we can bring the Christian message to modern man. For it is only in the Christian message that modern man can find the answer to his questions and the energy for his commitment of human solidarity."

 

John Paul II: Redemptoris Missio  

“I wish to invite the Church to renew her missionary commitment.” 

“…it is the primary service which the Church can render to every individual and to all humanity in the modern world, a world which has experienced marvelous achievements but which seems to have lost its sense of ultimate realities and of existence itself. "Christ the Redeemer," I wrote in my first encyclical, "fully reveals man to himself.... The person who wishes to understand himself thoroughly...must...draw near to Christ.... [The] Redemption that took place through the cross has definitively restored to man his dignity and given back meaning to his life in the world."

 

Benedict XVI

“Throughout the centuries, the Church has never ceased to proclaim the salvific mystery of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, but today that same message needs renewed vigor to convince contemporary man, who is often distracted and insensitive…

“For this reason, the new evangelization must try to find ways of making the proclamation of salvation more effective; a proclamation without which personal existence remains contradictory and deprived of what is essential. Even for those who remain tied to their Christian roots, but who live the difficult relationship with modernity, it is important to realize that being Christian is not a type of clothing to wear in private or on special occasions, but is something living and all-encompassing, able to contain all that is good in modern life.” 

BXVI to Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization

 

“We…have this mission: to encounter our contemporaries so as to make His love known to them. Not so much by teaching, never by judging, but by being travelling companions. Like the deacon Philip, who – the Acts of the Apostles tell us – stood up, set out, ran towards the Ethiopian people and, as a friend, sat down beside them, entering into dialogue with the man who had a great desire for God in the midst of many doubts” 

—Pope Francis: International Meeting  for Academic Centers and  Schools of New Evangelization

 

Five Crises of Culture and Key Themes in the Thought of Bendict XVI 

 

1.     Truth and the Dictatorship of Relativism

“How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4: 14) comes true.

“Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.”  

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Mass Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice

After fall of Soviet Union relativism did not die but combined with desire for gratification to form a potent mix.  (CF to Augusto Del Noce on the shift from Christian Bourgeois to Pure Bourgeois)

Is Relativism Coherent?

• Denial of Truth is self-refuting

• Truth exists and is knowable

• But this does not mean we know it

• Relativism can be nothing other than a dictatorship

• Relativism leads to ideology

• St. Thomas Aquinas: Truth is conforming the mind to reality

• Josef Pieper: Seeing the World as it is and acting accordingly

Gospel Response -

In the homily where he speaks the Dictatorship of Relativism Benedict does not stop at intellectual refutation.  He responds with the person of Jesus.  He says:

“We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism. An "adult" faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceipt from truth.

We must develop this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - that creates unity and is fulfilled in love.”

            Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Mass Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice

2. Reason

• Regensburg Address

• Crisis of Reason—which is a crisis of politics which is a crisis of humanity

• We have limited reason to the empirical

• This is incoherent on its own terms because one cannot verify this claim empirically

• Must expand reason beyond the empirical otherwise it is not rational

The problem goes beyond incoherence.  It leads to what C.S. Lewis has called “the abolition of man.”  Empiricist rationality takes all the fundamental human experiences – love, beauty, goodness, hope, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and justice and relegates them outside the realm of reason. Love and justice then are no longer rational but pure emotion or chemical reactions.  

But this is false. In contrast we have what Lewis calls “reasonable emotions,” what Karol Wojtyla (St. John Paul II) calls “spiritual emotions” and what Dietrich von Hildebrand calls “intelligible spiritual affectivity.” Love is not simply raw emotion or chemical reaction. It includes that because we are embodied persons, but it also is reasonable. This is why the tradition defines love as an “act of the will” that “seeks the good of the other.”

 

“Critical Thinking” Exercise    (Thanks to Professor Mark Roberts for this insight)

__JS Bach was born in 1685

__JS Bach wrote beautiful music

__Pope Pius XII was the Bishop of Rome

__Pope Pius XII was a good Pope

__Bell Bottoms were popular in the 1970s

__Bell Bottoms are cool

__ ____________________________________

__ Murder is Bad…

And here we see the problems arise.

First, the opposite of a fact is not an opinion. The opposite of a fact is a false proposition. Opinions are justified belief. Opinions could be classified as good or bad depending upon how reasonable they are. Opinions are true or false if they align with a true proposition. Second, as C.S. Lewis explains in The Abolition of Man, this type of exercise deforms our intellects and our moral sensibilities. He writes:

It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.” 

“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
 

Limiting reason to the empirical has disastrous impact on politics and justice. The end of politics is (or should be) justice – but justice is not empirical.  As Ratzinger explains:

“Politics is the realm of Reason, not of a merely technological, calculating reason, but of moral reason, since the goal of the state, and hence, the ultimate goal of politics, has a moral nature, namely peace and justice.”

• Limiting reason to the empirical relegates all questions about truth, beauty, goodness, justice, and morality to the realm of subjective opinion and emotion (Regensburg Address)

• Return to Plato’s Thrasymachus: Justice is merely the right of the stronger:

• Power equals truth—or in our situation it is power, efficiency or consensus equals truth.

“…the majority cannot be an ultimate principle since there are values that no majority is entitled to annul. It can never be right to kill innocent persons, and no power can make this legitimate.  Here too, what is ultimately at stake is the defense of reason.  Reason—that is moral reason—is above the majority.”  “Political Visions and Political Praxis” 

 

Gospel Response: Faith purifies and heals reason. Reason must be expanded and additionally purified by Faith and the Church’s teaching Faith can contribute to correct politics. It can “illuminate and heal” reason.  

In the last century…it was the testimony of the martyrs that limited the excess of power, thus making a decisive contribution to the convalescence of reason”

Joseph Ratzinger: To Change or to Preserve? Political Visions and Political Praxis

 

“Reason only becomes truly human when it is open to the saving forces of faith and if it looks beyond itself.”  

Spe Salvi 23

Progress and Eschatology

• Myth of Progress—the kingdom of heaven on earth.

o   Progress is good – we are called to complete creation. But we cannot be saved by progress

o   The problem is a “faith in progress” and a kingdom of man, not the kingdom of God.

o   Progress will lead, through new vision of reason, to total freedom.

o   Eric Voegelin: “Immanentization of the Eschaton” Trying to create heaven on earth

o   Real error is found in misunderstanding of nature of man.

o   Politics built on false concept of progress are illusory and ultimately deny human freedom and man himself

o   Progress unhinged from morality and the truth about man is dangerous.

o   No longer about what I ought to do, but simply what I can do

o   Modern concepts of Progress derive from limitation of reason and “new correlation between science and praxis.” 

 

“Now this “redemption”, the restoration of the lost “Paradise” is no longer expected from faith, but from the newly discovered link between science and praxis. It is not that faith is simply denied; rather it is displaced onto another level—that of purely private and other-worldly affairs—and at the same time it becomes somehow irrelevant for the world. This programmatic vision has determined the trajectory of modern times and it also shapes the present-day crisis of faith which is essentially a crisis of Christian hope. Thus hope too, in Bacon, acquires a new form. Now it is called: faith in progress. For Bacon, it is clear that the recent spate of discoveries and inventions is just the beginning; through the interplay of science and praxis, totally new discoveries will follow, a totally new world will emerge, the kingdom of man[16]. He even put forward a vision of foreseeable inventions—including the aeroplane and the submarine. As the ideology of progress developed further, joy at visible advances in human potential remained a continuing confirmation of faith in progress as such.” 

Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi paragraph 17

                                                           

Response: Hope Tempers and Orders Progress

 

Reflect on the Last Things

1.     Politics is the realm of reason—and it is concerned with the present, not the future.

2.     But man is not merely oriented to the present—man is destined for eternal life with God—beyond politics.

3.     As Christians we must keep the last things in our view. Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell are real and death escapes no man. 

 

True Hope: In place of the myth of progress which enslaves we need a true understanding of Christian Hope--True hope can only be found in God  Spe Salvi # 27

 

A Proper Eschatology helps us avoid Utopianism

o   “A definitely ideal society presupposes the end of freedom”

o   The only person who could actually do this is God—and even he doesn’t do that:  God takes us seriously   cf Light of the World  

“Within this human history of ours the absolutely ideal situation will never exist and a perfected ordering of freedom will never be achieved… the myth of the liberated world of the future in which everything is different and everything will be good is false

We can only ever construct relative social orders which can only ever be relatively right and just.  Yet this very same closest possible approach to true right and justice is what we must strive to attain. Everything else, every eschatological  promise within history fails to liberate us, rather it disappoints and therefore enslaves us.   

Joseph Ratzinger: Truth and Tolerance  

 

“The right state of human affairs, the moral well-being of the world can never be guaranteed simply through structure alone, however good they may be.  What this means that every generation has the task of engaging anew in the arduous search for the right to order human affairs; this task is never simply completed.”

Spe Salvi

Politics has a place but as Christians we must remember that Politics is not the answer to our problems.

  

4.    Freedom

•  Truth and Tolerance: Freedom is the dominant theme of modernity.

• o   “Everybody wants to talk about freedom, but no one wants to talk about truth”

• o   If we can question truth – we should be able to question freedom

• Dominant idea: Nominalist concept of freedom severed from reason and truth.   “Diabolical Freedom”

• “An irrational will is not a free will”

• Freedom must be re-united to reason and oriented to truth

 

Response: Freedom is for Love

The purpose and end of freedom is love – to seek the good of the other in self-donation

Logos and Love

• Christian Hope leads us to Love in the person of Christ—Logos and Agape

• The purpose of Politics is peace and justice—and allowing the space for individuals and families to live out their freedom and responsibilities. 

• Man is not redeemed by science or progress. Man is redeemed by love. 

Two themes have always accompanied me in my life…the theme of Christ and the living, present God, the God who loves us and heals us through suffering, and on the other hand, the theme of love…the key to Christianity. 

Light of the World

 

 “Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable”

Deus Caritas Est

5.    Beauty

 When Beauty is reduced merely to the subjective—merely in the eye of the beholder this undermines objective beauty.  This has profound effect on morality, politics, and liturgy.  It also takes the sublime insight that each person is unique and un-repeatable and has unique insight into a piece of art or a beautiful landscape and takes this sublime truth and turns it into the banal that everybody has his own opinion.

• Beauty is separated from reason and truth and reduced to subjective opinion and expression

• The crisis of beauty has led to the proliferation of ugliness, crassness, obscenity, pornography, violence, and disregard for children, women, and life itself. 

• In response Benedict offers a Catholic understanding of beauty instantiated in the liturgy and sacraments.

“The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which as grown in her womb. Better witness is born to the Lord by the splendor of holiness and art…than by clever excuses which apologetics has come up with to justify the dark sides which, sadly, are so frequent in the Church’s human history.  If the Church is to continue to transform and humanize the world, how can she dispense with the beauty in her liturgies, that beauty which is so closely linked with the radiance of the resurrection?  No. Christians must not be too satisfied.  They must make their Church into a place where beauty—and hence truth—is at home.  Without this the world will become the first circle of Hell.”  Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger  

 

Truth         -         Jesus Christ

Reason             -          Faith

Progress           -          Hope

Freedom           -         Love

Beauty              - Worship and Liturgy 

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