At the Dawn of a New Creation

The May 7th America Magazine included Stephen P. White’s article, “Young U.S. Catholics want more orthodoxy. That doesn’t mean they reject Vatican II.” He quoted an Associated Press article that said: “Generations of Catholics who embraced the modernizing tide sparked in the 1960s by Vatican II are increasingly giving way to religious conservatives who believe the church has been twisted by change, with the promise of eternal salvation replaced by guitar Masses, parish food pantries, and casual indifference to church doctrine.”

I couldn’t help thinking throughout White’s article that he has got to be a referencing a very small subset of young Catholics. Where are these young people?! A bigger question for me was around the language of orthodoxy—eternal salvation, church doctrine, and the like. That language also struck me as too small—a kind of nostalgic, defensive language that often comes when, as Pope Francis said, we are at a change of eras.

I think most of us know, at least intuitively, that a new paradigm is emerging. Some of the characteristics are: an open system vs. closed, complexity vs. maintaining order, possibilities vs. goals, interconnected vs. individual, and holistic vs. mechanistic. 

Ewert Cousins, SJ, said we are now in a second axial consciousness that is “cosmic, collective, communal and ecological, and it is the consciousness of younger generations.” Even some of what seemed fundamental premises, including some from Vatican II, need to be reconsidered in light of a more expansive cosmology. Brian McLaren, who was featured in an Affiliate Mini-Mac a few years back, wrote that, “…our lives are about something more meaningful then winning and succeeding inside of a very small plot line.” We have assigned a very small plot line to God.

New eras, new paradigms can be elusive, intangible, and probably frightening. We humans don’t do all that well with them. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn wrote that paradigm shifts become necessary when the plausibility structure of the previous paradigm becomes so full of holes and patchwork “fixes” that a complete overhaul, which once looked utterly threatening, now appears as a lifeline.”  It seems we are still opting for patchwork fixes.

Understandably, when tens of thousands of people are dying in wars, migrants are stigmatized, whole populations are starving, violence is seen as some kind of solution, the climate is blowing up, racism has not left us, and the young (most of them) have walked away from institutional religion, this new paradigm thing can look way too abstract to give it serious consideration. But, to the contrary, beginning to understand the essential elements of this new time – new axial consciousness as Cousins called it, can only help us to more meaningfully and expansively respond to the crises of these times. Nostalgia for a previous time is neither unusual nor totally without some merit, if mostly emotional. However, too much is missing and/or not being taken into account for it to be a meaningful and lasting response.

Please think of participating in the September Maryknoll-Wide Gathering: Maryknoll at the Dawn of a New Creation: A Movement in Mission. (See Maryknoll-Wide Gathering. )

This article first appeared in the July/August issue of Not So Far Afield.