The Church in an age of anxiety

What direction should Catholicism take in America today? It’s a new setting, historically speaking, and despite all efforts, we don’t seem to be dealing with it well.

We live in a democratic consumer society that emphasizes widespread security and prosperity, and certain kinds of individual choice. It’s mostly been able to deliver those things, but that success appears increasingly precarious.

We seem prosperous, but prices outrun incomes, young people can’t find jobs or establish families, and the American federal deficit last year was 7.5% of national economic output.

In general, we are physically safe, but see constant wars abroad that threaten to involve serious adversaries with possibly horrific consequences. And we have recently seen a rise in crime at home, with criminals becoming more brazen, and the authorities often refusing to prosecute.

We also keep hearing about looming catastrophes—another pandemic, new and bigger wars, economic collapse, environmental degradation, political threats, climate change. The latest worry is that AI will take over the world, throw everyone out of work, declare humanity obsolete, and abolish us all.

But the world is big and complicated, and trustworthy analysis is hard to find, so it is difficult to evaluate these things. Are the dangers as real as advertised, or are they social media panics, scare stories propagated for political reasons, or illusions induced by misinformation and unrealistic expectations? And if the problems are real, how reliable are proposed solutions that evidently benefit their proponents?

Cultural changes exacerbate the unease.

A deep-seated technological utopianism tells people that politics and technology can do anything, and freedom, equality, safety, and comfort are the default state of human life.

That belief has replaced religion for many people, but it is obviously false. Life has unpleasant surprises, and something as complex and subtle as social life can’t possibly be managed. For that reason people constantly feel threatened by incomprehensible forces, since nothing works as they expect.

The feeling extends to our rulers. They fear their outlook may not be as well founded as they think, but can imagine no alternative, so when something unexpected happens they think the world is falling apart. If a flashy real estate billionaire wins an election, or a rich tech entrepreneur buys Twitter, intelligent people in responsible positions believe the Nazis are taking over.

The greatest contributor to insecurity, though, is loss of a setting in which people feel connected to their environment and to those around them. Global markets and bureaucracy are taking over more and more social functions. Electronic connections are replacing the physical presence of other human beings. People live in virtual worlds made up of transitory images and soundbites that can be assembled to make anything seem true.

The results are that people lose touch with reality, while family, Church, cultural tradition, and other non-market and non-bureaucratic arrangements lose importance. The latter are considered oppressive, since they are not based on individual choice like markets, nor on the neutral principles liberal government claims to uphold.

The downgrading of particular human connections, and the general unreality, mean loss of common standards on how to deal with each other. Some continue to believe human relations should be governed by a moral law based on human nature. Others insist that human nature does not exist, morality is a human creation, everyone creates his own identity, and it is bigoted and tyrannical to say otherwise.

The result is that some people think pornography in school libraries, and drag queens and sexual reassignment surgery for young people, are a matter of basic respect for members of sexual minorities. Others say they are blatant child abuse. What can the two sides say to each other?

The progressive side of the dispute aligns with our rulers’ preference for a manageable and administratively transparent system. They prefer to get rid of human ties and distinctions that are irrelevant to their concerns so the whole population can become an aggregate of graded interchangeable resources.

Public policy therefore tries to suppress them. Transgenderism provides one example. Mass immigration from everywhere provides another. It is inevitably disruptive, but the problems are blamed on racism and xenophobia: the existing population is excluding the newcomers and making it impossible for them to live peacefully and productively.

So the official answer is to get rid of exclusion, which includes every advantage local people have over new arrivals. That means further destruction of community and cultural standards and the networks of relationships that carry them. You can’t say “Merry Christmas,” or fly the national flag, because that would make some people feel left out.

The effect of all this is to make us lost in the world, because there is no place in which we belong. We can’t act effectively, because we are not connected to others in a way that makes trust and common effort possible. Hence careerism, ideological conformism, and obsession with money and pop culture. These are the ways people are still allowed to connect to the world and each other.

People respond to this situation with anxiety, paranoia, depression, various forms of addiction, populist outbursts that invariably fall apart, and insistence that government make them feel safe and wanted. In a secularist world of global uncertainty and individual isolation, what else is there to look to?

But can government deliver? There is the basic problem that social management does not work. In addition, though, looser social ties mean institutions are becoming less effective, less trusted, and more corrupt. And growing nihilism and social division make the common good ever harder to define. In its absence, social peace is maintained through propaganda, censorship, and a system of payoffs idealized as “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

The government thus fights exclusion by destroying the traditional relationships that connect people, and tries to make them feel secure through the technocratic approach to social life that causes much of the insecurity.

Under such circumstances, what should Catholics and the Church do?

One response has been to accommodate the tendencies now dominant. If respectable thought opposes traditional disciplines and distinctions, and wants to make everything an individual choice within a universal system of social administration, the Church should do so as well. She should make inclusion, accompaniment, and progressive social justice her prime concerns.

But can that approach be reconciled with Catholic teaching and tradition? Can it work as planned, or deliver a way of life anyone finds rewarding? And do people see any reason to bother with churches that adopt it?

It seems not. It seems better to maintain a basically traditional understanding of the Faith, try to live well in accordance with it, and offer the world an alternative.

That has advantages even from a skeptic’s point of view. As the secular outlook grows darker and more chaotic, Catholicism becomes more appealing by contrast. It has a structure of doctrine, authority, and discipline that has motivated, sustained, and developed a way of life and understanding of the world that millions have found immensely rewarding for two thousand years. These things have profoundly affected social relations for the better, and provided the setting for an active and diverse intellectual and artistic life.

On the other hand, the conditions that weaken and disrupt traditional arrangements in general affect Catholicism as well. We are constantly awash in images, soundbites, and anti-Catholic messages, while living in a hyper-organized society that wants us to become inert units of production and consumption.

To make matters worse, intellectual, artistic, and political life has mostly turned against the Church, depriving her of some of her best defenses and ornaments. But mainstream intellectual, artistic, and political life has also been disrupted and degraded. Why should we accept its continuing authority—the authority of Harvard University, The New York Times, and the Pulitzer Prize Board?

The condition of secular institutions makes it all the more imperative for Catholics to maintain their independence. Views differ on how that should be done, but it seems clear that cultural openness, which by itself points nowhere, should be subordinated to orthodoxy and tradition.

Suppression of traditional liturgies and insistent outreach to sexual dissidents therefore makes little sense. The idea that the way forward lies through politics makes even less. What we need above all is to love God, neighbor, and the Faith, and let that, under the guidance of Catholic tradition, inform our whole manner of life.

Where that leads us, we will discover: may we rise to the occasion.