I fear that with the accelerating rate of church closures and the "commutization" of people into their silos (not that it's a bad thing necessarily), we are losing a sense of what is the neighborhood or town parish. We are constantly on the go, trying to find the perfect niche with like-minded people and to shut ourselves away from bringing other people in to see the true, the good, and the beautiful. "They're too far gone." I'm reminded of a quote from Sheen (or was it Chesterton?): There are a thousand people who hate the Church for what they think it teaches, but a few who hate it for what it does.
Thank you for this comment. When the surrounding world is so very hostile and confused, there is a delicate balance, especially when children are involved. But I agree with you that the search for "the perfect niche" and "like-minded people" can go too far—evangelization has always been part of Christianity, and it always will be. I admit there are days when I feel discouraged—when it seems that people are indeed "too far gone." But I also believe that people are sometimes not as far gone as they may appear to be.
My parish’s location is a great tool for evangelization. One of the few that's growing in the diocese. Lots of people watch our processions and think they're cool, but I don't see them coming in. One person asked at Easter Vigil before we began if there was another “service” as he put it tomorrow. I hope he attended. It's actually more difficult to get people displaced from other diocesan TLMs to come here because of the reputation of the neighborhood the church is in.
I like and agree with your comments. In many ways, it seems like the Church is still trying to figure out the place of the 21st century parish. Even as recently as the mid-90s, when I went to a Catholic high school in Chicago, many of us identified ourselves by what parish we belonged to. There was a sense that the parish was the anchor of its neighborhood. Folks could trace back their family lineage a generation, two or three through the parish - it was the roots of both families and the neighborhoods. Now, folks are more transient; their parish is often a temporary stop before they move for work or some other reason. Especially in America which doesn't have the Catholic roots of Europe, it becomes evident that the parish is to be the center of individual, family, and community life; yet our commercial society centers its hubs on business and shopping. It often seems like an uphill battle to remain centered on the faith with this arrangement, let alone evangelize.
Tremendous piece of writing, astute and wise. I’d like to refocus slightly a few adjacent thoughts. I’ve been reading a short work that introduces Donald J. Keefe’s Covenantal and Eucharistic approach to theology, an inquiry that is historical and also metaphysical and ontological. Despite Balthasar’s concern that Keefe’s understanding of the Primordiality of Christ was a gnostic projection, I think, on the contrary, that it is a reflection built upon the concrete, historical meaning of Incarnation.
I bring Keefe up, because he understood, according to the small synopsis of his large theological effort, that the task of theology was rooted not in abstract hypotheses, but in ecclesial worship and liturgy that is historical in nature. Theology itself is ever an imperfect inquiry, so one cannot simply “canonize” past theological achievement, as if the future was only minor adjustments and whatnot, yet what mediates reality for theological insights is the objective reality of liturgical worship. And the latter, Keefe rightly recognizes, is the ecclesial fruit of the Eucharist. (Lose the foundation, and one becomes lost in a fragmented, debased imaginary.)
It seems to me that the “medieval” mode of synthesizing is actually the truly innovative creativity, because it arises from an eternal, transcendent gift. In contrast, the “nostalgia” for pagan liveliness was a retreat from the mystery of eternal life, and so a diminished nature ensconced in classical symbolism and putatively attainable by natural reason was exchanged for the unknown flourishing of Christian apocalypse which contains and transforms all the times.
Thought provoking stuff. Was there just one Renaissance? The 13th Century was a kind of Renaissance too. Certainly the Italian Humanists were eager to set themselves apart from their predecessors and did their share of PR to accomplish this. The question arises then, „was there really such a thing as the Middle Ages?“ if there is no bookend to define it. The Middle Ages might be an even more useless and nondescript term, meaning nothing more than the time between Antiquity and the Renaissance, but we are stuck with it. Umberto Eco wrote a great piece on this conundrum.
Thank you for this comment. When we speak of "𝘵𝘩𝘦 Renaissance," there was just one, but you're correct that the term is used for other eras of notable cultural flourishing (the Carolingian Renaissance, the Ottonian Renaissance, and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance).
The lack of a proper term for the Middle Ages is sometimes vexing, but an interesting thing that happened to me in the course of writing this newsletter is that I started realizing how appropriate the existing terminology is, if you think of it in a certain way. For example, I have written about viewing the "Middle" Age through the lens of the maxim "in medio stat virtus" (https://viamediaevalis.substack.com/p/balance).
I'm definitely of the opinion that the renaissance happened due to Dante christianizing the feudal troubadours. Feudalism only existed as a leftover strain of comitatus paganism. There were some moral troubadour stuff, but it wasn't exclusively or incipiently Christian. Dante allowed reinterpretation of the romantic "love" into a Christian transcendence. That ended up allowing, and opening up, the classical humanities, rather than just the sciences, to medieval society. I think, without that framing Dante provided, the renaissance would've never been able to be conceived.
In reading the Theological Origin's of Modernity and some other works dealing at least in part with the era proceeding what one might call modernity--though of course as you note periodization is always to leave out complexities or groups outside or the general course this era took in france vs. England vs. germany for instance. Anyway, there are two components with the rennaissance that seem to be equally important to what we see is the rise of humanism--both a pious and a sort of pagan return to the real ancients one--along with a major change which was incidental in a manner, because this change was caused simply by the fact of an extremely great and rapid increase of access to both a) platonic, new-platonic, stoic, and epicurean philosophy and b) though scholasticism was built on aristotle, Thomas only really had aristotle to build on and thus we end up with a rigid thomism which was easy to what to find alternatives to. So their is the combination of looking down from the spheres to the human being and developing more care about the quality of life and course of live of each human being, along with the idea that "we've got something more ancient and thus trustworthy which will free us from this limiting and rather rigid framework according to which we have been encased in the cosmos. Thus the rennaissance, in my mind, though it does turn toward pagan and occult ideas the general movement is simply caused by have an utter lack of history and then suddenly the ottoman's let them have what they took from the byzantines--the history of Greek philosophy and thought, and this in itself opened up a world incapable of being thought before that for intellectuals. Combine this with how medieval life was so determined by an economy of salvation based on exacting legal transactions of how this penance or act or payment will get me out of hell or more likely relieve one of a large amount of time which they had been carefully explained they would spend in purgatory, and all it takes is less plagues, some flourishing, and people realize, my gosh, between now and eternity, may in fact matter.
Thank you for these interesting perspectives! I didn't mention this one in the article, but another description of the Renaissance that I have come across in my reading aligns to some extent with what you're saying here: "The great Dutch humanist Erasmus, who spent some time in England and developed a close friendship with More, was a leader in the assault on what he and others regarded as a hopelessly narrow and outmoded intellectual culture based on scholastic hair-splitting and a dogmatic adherence to the philosophy of Aristotle."
“Each successive wave of modernity—urbanism, commercialism, rationalism, empiricism, Romanticism, industrial capitalism, relativism, sentimentalism, to an extent even nihilism—has exerted far too much influence on Christian minds, lifestyles, and communities.”
Doesn’t it make you wonder whether some of these “isms” are a repetition of thought from even earlier periods? — much like heresies seem to go and then come back (7th Day Adventists are just a repeat of the Judaizers that St Peter faced in the Acts, etc.). And if that’s true, what is the mean, the balanced thought or even way of thinking? Is it St. Thomas?
Thank you for this comment. I think to some extent there is repetition, but I also think that modernity was such a furious hive of discontent and innovation that humans starting thinking and acting in ways that were truly unprecedented. Heresies could even be interpreted as a counterexample: the early centuries of Christianity came up with all sorts of heresies, but only modernity came up with the notion that there is no such thing as heresy, because truth doesn't exist and people are free to believe whatever they want. On the other hand, disordered urbanism appears to go back to Genesis (cf. Gn 4:17), commercialism of some kind probably has a very long pedigree, and one could argue that the work of Plato and Aristotle is informed by a preliminary version of rationalism.
In my view, balanced thought (to the extent that such is possible for fallen man) was achieved in the High Middle Ages (around the eleventh century, maybe the twelfth, or maybe the tenth). Overall, St. Thomas (thirteenth century) is an excellent representative of that balance, but it is hard for me to avoid the impression that he went a little bit too far in the direction of a rationalistic, harshly systematic, over-intellectualized approach to human life and spirituality. I'm neither a Thomist nor a theologian, so I would be glad to have someone convince me otherwise.
I fear that with the accelerating rate of church closures and the "commutization" of people into their silos (not that it's a bad thing necessarily), we are losing a sense of what is the neighborhood or town parish. We are constantly on the go, trying to find the perfect niche with like-minded people and to shut ourselves away from bringing other people in to see the true, the good, and the beautiful. "They're too far gone." I'm reminded of a quote from Sheen (or was it Chesterton?): There are a thousand people who hate the Church for what they think it teaches, but a few who hate it for what it does.
Thank you for this comment. When the surrounding world is so very hostile and confused, there is a delicate balance, especially when children are involved. But I agree with you that the search for "the perfect niche" and "like-minded people" can go too far—evangelization has always been part of Christianity, and it always will be. I admit there are days when I feel discouraged—when it seems that people are indeed "too far gone." But I also believe that people are sometimes not as far gone as they may appear to be.
My parish’s location is a great tool for evangelization. One of the few that's growing in the diocese. Lots of people watch our processions and think they're cool, but I don't see them coming in. One person asked at Easter Vigil before we began if there was another “service” as he put it tomorrow. I hope he attended. It's actually more difficult to get people displaced from other diocesan TLMs to come here because of the reputation of the neighborhood the church is in.
I like and agree with your comments. In many ways, it seems like the Church is still trying to figure out the place of the 21st century parish. Even as recently as the mid-90s, when I went to a Catholic high school in Chicago, many of us identified ourselves by what parish we belonged to. There was a sense that the parish was the anchor of its neighborhood. Folks could trace back their family lineage a generation, two or three through the parish - it was the roots of both families and the neighborhoods. Now, folks are more transient; their parish is often a temporary stop before they move for work or some other reason. Especially in America which doesn't have the Catholic roots of Europe, it becomes evident that the parish is to be the center of individual, family, and community life; yet our commercial society centers its hubs on business and shopping. It often seems like an uphill battle to remain centered on the faith with this arrangement, let alone evangelize.
Tremendous piece of writing, astute and wise. I’d like to refocus slightly a few adjacent thoughts. I’ve been reading a short work that introduces Donald J. Keefe’s Covenantal and Eucharistic approach to theology, an inquiry that is historical and also metaphysical and ontological. Despite Balthasar’s concern that Keefe’s understanding of the Primordiality of Christ was a gnostic projection, I think, on the contrary, that it is a reflection built upon the concrete, historical meaning of Incarnation.
I bring Keefe up, because he understood, according to the small synopsis of his large theological effort, that the task of theology was rooted not in abstract hypotheses, but in ecclesial worship and liturgy that is historical in nature. Theology itself is ever an imperfect inquiry, so one cannot simply “canonize” past theological achievement, as if the future was only minor adjustments and whatnot, yet what mediates reality for theological insights is the objective reality of liturgical worship. And the latter, Keefe rightly recognizes, is the ecclesial fruit of the Eucharist. (Lose the foundation, and one becomes lost in a fragmented, debased imaginary.)
It seems to me that the “medieval” mode of synthesizing is actually the truly innovative creativity, because it arises from an eternal, transcendent gift. In contrast, the “nostalgia” for pagan liveliness was a retreat from the mystery of eternal life, and so a diminished nature ensconced in classical symbolism and putatively attainable by natural reason was exchanged for the unknown flourishing of Christian apocalypse which contains and transforms all the times.
This is a wonderful comment, thank you.
"the task of theology was rooted not in abstract hypotheses, but in ecclesial worship and liturgy that is historical in nature"—I agree.
"what mediates reality for theological insights is the objective reality of liturgical worship"—I strongly agree.
"It seems to me that the 'medieval' mode of synthesizing is actually the truly innovative creativity"—I absolutely agree!
Thought provoking stuff. Was there just one Renaissance? The 13th Century was a kind of Renaissance too. Certainly the Italian Humanists were eager to set themselves apart from their predecessors and did their share of PR to accomplish this. The question arises then, „was there really such a thing as the Middle Ages?“ if there is no bookend to define it. The Middle Ages might be an even more useless and nondescript term, meaning nothing more than the time between Antiquity and the Renaissance, but we are stuck with it. Umberto Eco wrote a great piece on this conundrum.
Thank you for this comment. When we speak of "𝘵𝘩𝘦 Renaissance," there was just one, but you're correct that the term is used for other eras of notable cultural flourishing (the Carolingian Renaissance, the Ottonian Renaissance, and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance).
The lack of a proper term for the Middle Ages is sometimes vexing, but an interesting thing that happened to me in the course of writing this newsletter is that I started realizing how appropriate the existing terminology is, if you think of it in a certain way. For example, I have written about viewing the "Middle" Age through the lens of the maxim "in medio stat virtus" (https://viamediaevalis.substack.com/p/balance).
I'm definitely of the opinion that the renaissance happened due to Dante christianizing the feudal troubadours. Feudalism only existed as a leftover strain of comitatus paganism. There were some moral troubadour stuff, but it wasn't exclusively or incipiently Christian. Dante allowed reinterpretation of the romantic "love" into a Christian transcendence. That ended up allowing, and opening up, the classical humanities, rather than just the sciences, to medieval society. I think, without that framing Dante provided, the renaissance would've never been able to be conceived.
In reading the Theological Origin's of Modernity and some other works dealing at least in part with the era proceeding what one might call modernity--though of course as you note periodization is always to leave out complexities or groups outside or the general course this era took in france vs. England vs. germany for instance. Anyway, there are two components with the rennaissance that seem to be equally important to what we see is the rise of humanism--both a pious and a sort of pagan return to the real ancients one--along with a major change which was incidental in a manner, because this change was caused simply by the fact of an extremely great and rapid increase of access to both a) platonic, new-platonic, stoic, and epicurean philosophy and b) though scholasticism was built on aristotle, Thomas only really had aristotle to build on and thus we end up with a rigid thomism which was easy to what to find alternatives to. So their is the combination of looking down from the spheres to the human being and developing more care about the quality of life and course of live of each human being, along with the idea that "we've got something more ancient and thus trustworthy which will free us from this limiting and rather rigid framework according to which we have been encased in the cosmos. Thus the rennaissance, in my mind, though it does turn toward pagan and occult ideas the general movement is simply caused by have an utter lack of history and then suddenly the ottoman's let them have what they took from the byzantines--the history of Greek philosophy and thought, and this in itself opened up a world incapable of being thought before that for intellectuals. Combine this with how medieval life was so determined by an economy of salvation based on exacting legal transactions of how this penance or act or payment will get me out of hell or more likely relieve one of a large amount of time which they had been carefully explained they would spend in purgatory, and all it takes is less plagues, some flourishing, and people realize, my gosh, between now and eternity, may in fact matter.
Thank you for these interesting perspectives! I didn't mention this one in the article, but another description of the Renaissance that I have come across in my reading aligns to some extent with what you're saying here: "The great Dutch humanist Erasmus, who spent some time in England and developed a close friendship with More, was a leader in the assault on what he and others regarded as a hopelessly narrow and outmoded intellectual culture based on scholastic hair-splitting and a dogmatic adherence to the philosophy of Aristotle."
“Each successive wave of modernity—urbanism, commercialism, rationalism, empiricism, Romanticism, industrial capitalism, relativism, sentimentalism, to an extent even nihilism—has exerted far too much influence on Christian minds, lifestyles, and communities.”
Doesn’t it make you wonder whether some of these “isms” are a repetition of thought from even earlier periods? — much like heresies seem to go and then come back (7th Day Adventists are just a repeat of the Judaizers that St Peter faced in the Acts, etc.). And if that’s true, what is the mean, the balanced thought or even way of thinking? Is it St. Thomas?
Thank you for this comment. I think to some extent there is repetition, but I also think that modernity was such a furious hive of discontent and innovation that humans starting thinking and acting in ways that were truly unprecedented. Heresies could even be interpreted as a counterexample: the early centuries of Christianity came up with all sorts of heresies, but only modernity came up with the notion that there is no such thing as heresy, because truth doesn't exist and people are free to believe whatever they want. On the other hand, disordered urbanism appears to go back to Genesis (cf. Gn 4:17), commercialism of some kind probably has a very long pedigree, and one could argue that the work of Plato and Aristotle is informed by a preliminary version of rationalism.
In my view, balanced thought (to the extent that such is possible for fallen man) was achieved in the High Middle Ages (around the eleventh century, maybe the twelfth, or maybe the tenth). Overall, St. Thomas (thirteenth century) is an excellent representative of that balance, but it is hard for me to avoid the impression that he went a little bit too far in the direction of a rationalistic, harshly systematic, over-intellectualized approach to human life and spirituality. I'm neither a Thomist nor a theologian, so I would be glad to have someone convince me otherwise.
Love the thorough explanation of the opposing views, and your summation of which you believe to be true. Nuance is nice to see.
Thank you for this kind and encouraging comment!
Very well explained. Thank you! I look forward to seeing your next post.
Excellent article.
Thank you!