New York City, N.Y., Jun 30, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA).- With Catholic proposals to literally head for the hills in response to Christianity’s ever-lessening influence in secular culture, the leader of a global ecclesial movement has a provocative statement:
This is actually a great time for the Church.
“As a matter of fact,” says Father Julian Carron, “it is a precious occasion to verify the validity of the Christian proposal.”
Already garnering some notable attention since its release, a new book by Fr. Carron called “Disarming Beauty” takes on the question of the Church’s relevance amid modern society’s most pressing challenges. From terrorism to consumerism, “rights” culture to marriage and family, the book examines the plight of our current world and invites Christians to respond – not from a place of fear, but from the joy of their original encounter with the living person of Christ.
“The fact that the Church is no longer a moral majority is liberating; it allows us to rediscover the heart of the Christian event,” he told CNA. “The Church will survive and thrive only through Her witness.”
Fr. Carron heads Communion and Liberation, which originated in the 1950s with Italian priest Msgr. Luigi Giussani. The international movement focuses on the actualization of man’s faith by living the Christian presence within community.
Please read below for our full interview with Fr. Carron:
Why ‘Disarming Beauty’? What does the title mean to you?
The book speaks of the beauty of Christian faith, of its power and its attraction. When God takes on flesh, He strips Himself of His own power, entering into the history and poverty of the human condition, revealing to everyone the truth of His power. This is how Christianity, the greatest revolution of all time, began. Christ is the exemplar of a way of communicating truth that needs no other means beyond the beauty of truth itself. The book speaks primarily of this beauty, which is not just an aesthetic or sentimental one. Like all beautiful things, Christianity needs no other defense, other then its own beauty, to be communicated. With the expression “disarming beauty” I wanted to say: “We Christians, do we believe in the fascination that the disarming beauty of the faith can exercise?” With the phrase “disarming beauty,” I propose a Christian presence that would be sufficiently attractive so as to make life more interesting for everyone.
What exactly does beauty “disarm” us of? How does it do that?
Beauty disarms us from our narrow way of looking at ourselves and at reality; it opens our minds and our eyes to the totality of reality, of the real. The attractiveness of beauty moves us affectively, so much so that it allows reason to become truly opened to all the factors of reality. We discover this openness in Christ’s gaze on reality; we are surprised by the way Jesus looks at the publicans, at Zacchaeus or Matthew, or at the crowd. How is his gaze different from the one of the Pharisees, which reduces the person to his ability or his ethical performance? Jesus’ gaze at Zacchaeus helps him discover himself, awakening his self-awareness, something none of the Pharisees’ reproaches could do. We can say the same about the Samaritan woman, or the tenth leper. We understand the shock that His presence provoked: “We never saw anything like this.”
What do you perceive as the single greatest threat in modern society?
I think it is feeling adrift, destabilized, alone, and uncertain. Most propose to fight these emotions with walls, or changes in the system at the institutional level (as depicted by T.S. Eliot). Men and women today wait for, perhaps unconsciously, the experience of an encounter with people for whom life is “solid” in the midst of change. What will wake people up today is a human impact, an event that echoes the initial event that occurred when Jesus raised His eyes and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down. I want to stay at your house today.” I believe that the present era is a great opportunity to witness to the disarming beauty of Christianity, and to verify the fascination of the Christian event, which does not require a context to protect it.
Why is education so important? Why do you say it’s the greatest challenge the Church faces?
We see so many students and teachers passive, skeptical, and even bored. Since we don’t know what to do, we manage the symptoms. Yet, we must face the challenge. The challenge for the educator is to reawaken desire, to experience the restlessness which St. Augustine speaks about. To do so, we must introduce students to a relationship with reality in its totality, with all of its beauty and meaning.
For this reason, it is necessary to put the person at the center, to teach students to look at the world with their own eyes, to think with their own heads, thus developing a critical spirit that makes their “I” more of a protagonist and less a spectator, more a leader and less a follower, more a citizen and less a subject.
This dynamic is only possible when a teacher is a witness to this relationship with reality, not as one who imposes herself or her way of seeing things upon others, in an authoritarian way, but someone who challenges the other by her own way of living.
What changes must the Church make not only to survive, but thrive in today’s modern culture?
Christians are faced with an unprecedented challenge. Yet, we are not afraid of wide-ranging dialogue, without any privileges. As a matter of fact, it is a precious occasion to verify the validity of the Christian proposal. The fact that the Church is no longer a moral majority is liberating; it allows us to rediscover the heart of the Christian event. The Church will survive and thrive only through Her witness.
Arguably, though, there are a lot of Catholics who do not find it “liberating” that the Church is no longer the moral majority. Many are actually afraid of this phenomenon, and feel as though Catholics either have to isolate from culture or hold even more tightly to the tenets of Christianity as an increasingly extreme counter-witness. What do you say to this?
That the Church is no longer the moral majority is a fact. It’s useless to complain. The fact that many Catholics are afraid of this situation shows the lack of certainty in the unarmed beauty of faith, causing them to either isolate themselves from the culture to ‘preserve’ the faith, or to see their presence in society as a counter-reaction. To describe what kind of presence is needed today, this observation may be useful:
When we have to defend something in the context of a debate, in order to make our response stronger, we almost unconsciously accept the way the other frames the issue. In doing so, we allow our position to be determined by its opposition. It is reactive instead of being an original position, that is, a position that comes from our experience of faith. This leads to further reducing Christianity, or its testimony, to the mere repetition of a doctrine, of some values or ethics. (Disarming Beauty, pp. 70-71).
Christian faith was born in a pluralistic society in Palestine and spread throughout a multicultural Roman empire. The first Christians based the communication of their faith only in their own witness. Their free and joyful position sprang from the core of their faith, not from fear of the world. “Man today expects, perhaps unconsciously, the experience of an encounter with people for whom the fact of Christ is such a present reality that their life is changed. What will shake up men and women today is a human impact; an event that echoes the initial event, when Jesus raised His eyes and said, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry down. I mean to stay at your house today.’” (Luigi Giussani to the Synod on the Laity, 1987).
You reference the malaise of “lethargy and existential boredom.” How do modern men and women regain a sense of wonder and desire in front of their lives? In your view, what is the first step, and what is Church’s role in this?
The first step is to encounter somebody who reawakens us from our lethargy and boredom. Regardless of the human situation, something unforeseen is always possible, something unexpected, which makes us regain the sense of ourselves. The Church has a unique possibility to offer a big contribution to the modern situation if she rediscovers the real nature of Christianity as an event, an event that reawakens the person, just as we see in the Gospels.
How do you encounter someone who awakens you? Is there a danger of moral subjectivity, here? Does one just follow anything that attracts?
You can see this when you meet someone who awakens you in your own experience like when you fall in love with someone. You don’t need anybody else assuring you that it is that particular person who has awakened you from your apathy, or your meaningless life. It’s something objective, something that comes out of you. We can use the same method looking at the origin of Christian faith. As then-Cardinal Ratzinger said in 1993: “we can recognize only something that raises a correspondence in us.” Anybody can recognize Christ “because he corresponds to the nature of man…the longing for the infinite which is alive and unquenchable within man.” In the opening lines of Deus Caritas Est, he brought this to everyone’s attention: “Being Christian is not an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person who gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” The person of Jesus is such a great and precious good, as He alone fully corresponds to the human thirst for happiness. And, the exceptional correspondence He brings about in those who meet him makes them capable of being in relationship with reality in an absolutely gratuitous way.
You speak of dialogue in the book a lot. How is this possible and why is it essential?
Dialogue is crucial because it is the possibility for a person to enter into a relationship with the other’s experience. Sharing our own experiences with others, welcoming the experiences of others, is the only way to enrich our life.
Freedom in dialogue comes from the esteem one has for the experience of the other. This esteem permits one to enter into relationship with the richness of the experience of another person – in order to enrich one’s own perspective. We can say with Terence: “Nothing human is foreign to us.” And when one has this certainty, he or she has no problem entering into a dialogue.
Why is it important for Christians to defend religious freedom?
Because of the relationship between truth and freedom. The Second Vatican Council enables us see that there is no other way to communicate truth than through freedom. Reason is the nature of truth, and truth needs only its own beauty to communicate itself. “The truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth.”
Christian faith requires the use of reason and freedom. Without these two, Christianity isn’t the least bit interesting. Today, therefore, only in a free environment will Christian faith be able to interest people, because for modern men and women (and in this the Enlightenment has played a foundational role), there is no greater good than freedom. No one today would think of proposing or imposing something that goes against freedom.
With the collapse of what was at one time evident (family, marriage, work, relative peace in our cities), where do we begin again?
The same way they did 2000 years ago, with a witness. Jesus introduced such a newness in history that people who met Him remained speechless, even to the point to saying: “We have never have seen anything like it.” There is no way to challenge human reason and freedom other then a life – the more fascinating life of a witness. People need to see and touch again, in a tangible way, the values that today are in crisis.
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ACLU would freak out if lawyers had to divulge client privilege.
The plot thickens…as another and former Washington State bishop predicted (from Yakima and then Portland, Oregon), Francis George (1937-2015), later as the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago–his successors would be imprisoned, and their successors would be martyred.
Mr. Beaulieu;
Good point.
As one of many commenting Washington State citizens, yours truly sent this letter to our legislators:
“I respectfully and vigorously oppose SB 5280 because it removes the reporting exemption for Catholic priests for information heard (almost certainly anonymously!) within the Sacrament of Penance. Three points:
FIRST, the bill is ineffective since the sacrament is usually and optionally administered secretly behind an opaque screen (!) and the priest cannot even know who the penitent is;
SECOND, the effect of the bill will be that penitents will simply avoid the sacrament altogether if they suspect a state informant system is in place.
THIRD, under canon law the priest is subject to automatic excommunication (check it out) for violating not only the penitent but, equally seriously, this part of a sacramental life that goes back 2,000 years (to One who is greater than any legislative body).
An alternative would be for all state legislators to address the very broad moral meltdown inflicted on students–and which contributes to a wide spectrum of consequences within society at large, including student suicide and classroom shootings–by a supposedly morally-neutral educational system, but which in fact is a moral vacuum which invites and fosters the historic societal meltdown now terrifying all of us. Legislative posturing on prime-time news in front of spastic legislation is part of the problem, not the solution…
So, I do support legislative concern against sexual abuse–but find this bill totally ineffective or worse on three persuasive counts (above), and even abusively overreaching with regard to Church-State relations. In centuries past, priests have suffered imprisonment and even death rather than violate a penitent or the sacramental life of the Church (I first learned about THIS in 1955 under a Protestant elementary school teacher–in a public school! She would be fired today without a hearing, and would the Washington State Legislature give a damn?).”
The same grotesque leftist law makers are advancing abuse of a nature no less abominable by forwarding a wolf in the disguise of “gender affirming care” which devours the whole vulnerable child. The mirrors of these law makers should work to condemn them in this evil; but, being malformed in conscience they advance an agenda which is no less than the very Handmaid of Antichrist. I fret about the fate of souls in our Novus Ordo parishes whose car bumpers are adorned with political stickers meant to advance this evil Handmaid. I fear it won’t go well for them. I don’t know how, but, they have been misled, deceived, never educated or worse, encouraged, even while being “participants” of holy mass.
1) Pass the law
2) A Priest defies it
3) The cops come and get him
4) They lead him out in handcuffs
MAKE SURE THERE ARE MANY MANY CAMERAS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
“A spokesman for the Washington State Catholic Conference told CNA that the organization is working with lawmakers to craft a bill that protects children and the seal of confession.”
It is, sadly, typical of these people that they use children in this way. I’m glad that Bishop Daly said what he said, but IMO he should have made his statement stronger – MUCH stronger.
I think a far more likely scenario is this: they pass the law, then wonder how to enforce it, since nearly all confessions are anonymous and the priest likely has no idea who the penitent was, if he even remembers the confession at all–and there is no practical way the police would even learn of such a confession in the first place. Realizing that the measure is unenforceable without prior state intervention, they obtain a court order to bug the confessionals. But after a year or two of listening to recorded confessions, they have failed to catch a single child abuser in the act of confessing. Instead, they are forced to listen to hundreds of people confessing sins of anger, impatience, non-criminal sexual sins (such as consuming pornography) and the like. It’s very frustrating. Obviously, they must change tactics. The police now send dozens of undercover officers into confessionals, who then record themselves confessing the most vial sins of child abuse–all of it staged and fake, unbeknownst to the priests, who of course grant absolution and then do not demand the penitent’s identity so that he can be reported to the police. After spending a year or so staging such confessions to every priest in the diocese from the bishop on down, without a single priest ever reporting a single penitent, the audio recordings go to a grand jury, which then indicts the bishop and all his priests. An army of cops, dressed in paramilitary gear, armed with fully automatic rifles, charges the churches and rectories early one morning, hauling in priests by the truckload, who are then ordered held without bail by judges who also order all the churches padlocked. The church is effectively put out of business in that diocese. Period. There’s your scenario. There’s what’s likely to happen if such a law ever passes.
Mr. Northon;
IMO were they even to attempt to get court orders to implement your scenario, the excrement would hit the air circulator to such an extent that they would shy away from taking it any further.
At least I HOPE and PRAY that would happen.
The process would be done entirely in secret–until the actual arrests. As for the rest–in the wake of what happened to Cardinal Pell and former President Trump, I don’t think it’s a safe assumption anymore that the establishment would never stoop to such a thing.
Disregard of religious integrity comes with a deepening of atheistic secularism, the spiritual leprosy that’s spreading worldwide. Former inviolable principles of justice, including those enshrined in the Constitution thought ad infinitum now fall like withered leaves. Deception, pretense, are the new. Religiosity, rosary beads, signs of the cross shadow intense hatred of truth, of innocent life.
Confession, Catholicism’s inviolable sacrament of reconciliation had been under assault in the past at times despotic royalty in the age of Christendom, under Antichrist regimes Nazism and Communism. It survived. Priests were martyred. That sacrosanct transaction between man and God insures the freedom to confess sin and be absolved free of retribution should what’s confessed be accessed [a priest may and should advise some penitents to satisfy civil justice, to seek professional assistance when and where warranted, although never under compulsion].
Our Nation is influenced by an apparent majority who have abandoned God and the values of Christianity that shaped our founding fathers’ thoughts, enactments, principles for rule. Revision of the Constitution has morphed into cancel culture dismissal. Political arms of government, the Justice Dept, is now an enforcement agency for an ideology. Fearfully, it seems the establishment [deep state] will stop at nothing to prevent a return to the true meaning of liberty and justice.
Increasingly evident the Church is the remaining institution that provides a rational just option, a barrier. That is, if its members who still hold to the faith are prepared to pay the price. And with that achieve salvation for themselves and others.
I want the bishops to lead by example
Maybe all the faithful should insist on confessing to their Bishop ONLY. Just a thought . . .
Its been clear for some years that the inmates are running the asylum in Washington State. I would not live there if THEY paid ME. Portland is a particularly badly run cesspool. I feel for the normal folk who have not yet chosen to move from the state. AS for this bill, I dont think ANY genuine catholic priest would obey it. And a question arises, how would the STATE know they were not? Only if they insert themselves undercover into a confessional with a tape recorder and tape themselves falsely confessing just such a sin, then waiting to see if the priest makes a report. This bill is a gross violation of personal privacy and our constitutional freedom of religion. I hope that if it should pass, the Bishop of Spokane will take it to court right up to the supreme court level. This bill specifically targets Catholic priests and therefore is trying to single out one religion with this bill, which is also unconstitutional, as it amounts to suppression of a Catholics practice of faith and unequal application of the law. They appear to be under the impression that the church has a monopoly on pedophiles. It does not. Many children have been abused by teachers, doctors, coaches, family members, and a whole panoply of the rest of society. This is a disgusting distortion of the law.
My bad. Portland is Oregon!!