Per Christum

There is a lot to digest in Pope Benedict’s newest encyclical, Spe Salvi. However, one theme I think permeates the text is the failure of modern progress, including all sorts of academic and pseudo-academic “isms” and movements, to actually make life more hope filled. Benedict urges a critique of modernity, and a self-critique of modern Christianity. The pope is not suggesting progress is a bad thing, or that we can’t find glimpses of hope in things besides God. Yet these “are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else.” In the end, putting our faith in the kingdom of men is insufficient, because the kingdom of men is run by just that, men. We all know how even well-meaning humans are able to completely foul things up. Witnessing the 20th century, supposedly the most enlightened, yet most brutal, century of all time, probably deeply influenced this pope to be wary of putting one’s trust in mortals, and their efforts at progress. Unfortunately, Benedict is speaking to generations that have been taught that the self is what ultimately matters, and when he challenges us to critically examine our ideas of progress vested in human achievement, many are going to react negatively. The pope is being called “out-of-date” and so forth, but how many who accuse him of this have ever stopped to critically examine their understanding of progress and happiness, and what this is doing to western civilization? The pope challenges us to look at hope, and what brings it, and what does not. He reminds us that the only hope that holds firm in spite of all disappointments is God.

Of course, the pope, aware that modernism has infiltrated Christianity to a large degree, reminds us that we shouldn’t fall back on an individualistic understanding of salvation for our hope, because that, like believing mankind will save us, is a modernist way of looking at salvation. We cannot achieve communion with Jesus alone or from our own resources alone. Here the pope challenges us to avoid two pitfalls of modernity’s influence on religion: the belief that we can save ourselves (as held by those promoting “social gospel”), or an individualism in which we are saved in a personal vacuum (held by many evangelicals and fundamentalists). Unfortunately we see modernity’s influence in the Catholic Church, where the self is placed higher than Christ and the Church, and we demand the Church conform to us rather than we conforming to the Christ and the Church. Some denominations have even made become very good at shaping their particular churches in the image of the trends and “isms” of modernity.

At the end of the encyclical, to counteract this hopeless age, the pope explains ways to learn hope (suggesting hope is not simply an emotional feeling that comes and goes, but like other virtues, a habit).

The first way is prayer. In a world where people have many acquaintances, but live far from family and friends, God is always there to listen even when people are not. Prayer directs us to our ultimate hope, God, and away from the things in our lives that are either limited sources of hope, or detract from hope altogether. Next, the pope discusses serious and upright human conduct as “hope in action.” Particularly Benedict emphasizes suffering. The true measure of humanity is determined by suffering, and individuals and societies that cannot accept suffering and are incapable of bearing it, are in a sense, “inhuman.” It seems as if our society has no good philosophy to deal with suffering or sacrifice, both which are inevitable, and the result is either despair and depression, or a sense of entitlement in which a person exhausts all material efforts to avoid any kind of suffering. Third, the pope emphasizes God’s last judgment as a way to learn hope. This theme has been downplayed recently, but essentially without a last judgment we are left in a world without hope, a world in which injustice and evil win the day. A professor and friend of mine told the story of an eight year old boy who was killed by his father because of child abuse. My professor suggested something to the effect that if this is the end of this matter, and the universe is no more just than this, than “to hell with this universe.” However, with a Catholic understanding God’s judgment and purification, we know that this unjust world isn’t all there is, and what hope this offers! Finally Benedict provides Mary as an example of hope, a woman whose role in God’s plan developed from her acceptance of God’s will as a young virgin, to her role as mother of all believers in the Church today. Mary shows us the way to hope.

As a (post)modern Catholic highly critical of many of the claims of modernist philosophical and theological movements, I welcome this encyclical. I agree with the pope that the “progress” offered in modernity has been mixed, offering us some hope, but also distracting us from our ultimate hope. Only God offers us final hope, hope at such a level the various “isms” and secular trends of modernity cannot offer.