The Disconnect Between Catholic Academics and Daily Living

One of my personal complaints against Catholic philosophy and theology for the past 100 years or so has been its increasingly academic, specialized nature and consequently its lack of immediate application to daily Catholic living. Of course, there are many counterexamples to this sentiment, but even in many of those counterexamples, one will find the same specialized, technical handling hindering its consumption by a wider, literate lay audience.

For example, take the notion of the universal call to holiness, promoted officially in Lumen Gentium, ch. 5. Bishop Sheen famously said we have entered the age of the laity. Paul VI and John Paul II promoted the same notion when they advocated repeatedly for evangelization efforts to be taken up by the lay faithful, which is tied up with the universal call to holiness since the soul of the apostolate is sanctity and the end point of evangelization is sanctity. In this ongoing academic discussion, what have we instead witnessed? Decades and decades (if not over a century) of theological disagreements over the exact nature of the development of the spiritual life and its application to apostolic work, all under the heading of spiritual theology. These are necessary debates, to be sure, but what certain, concrete conclusions may be drawn from them and given to the layman for use? Instead, many will find it much easier and more practical to read one of the classic works of spirituality, such as the Introduction to the Devout Life or the Spiritual Combat or a book of meditations by St. Alphonsus. In other words, the theological battles of the 20th century that led to the promotion of this idea that we are in the age of the laity and that the laity have a newfound responsibility to promote the causes of Our Lord through the sanctification of the world have no palpable application for actual laypeople living in the world. They must return to older works by the Saints and Doctors who had no such theological concerns in order to begin to live in a manner that the 20th century theologians have called for. Hence the disconnect between academic, specialized life and concrete lay life. 

Or take another example, the case of aesthetics. Especially in the past few decades, we have heard touted the famous line, "Beauty will save the world." Bishop Barron has been an ardent proponent of this approach to evangelization--we draw people in by beauty. Peter Kreeft has mentioned that he was partly converted by the beauty of older Catholic Churches (never mind that he was also converted by a serious reading of the Church Fathers). Yet when one skims through the academic literature conducted by Catholic philosophers and theologians on aesthetics, one is left scratching his head whether we stand on firm ground by upholding such an approach or what such a pithy phrase even means metaphysically, let alone in its concrete application to a methodology for evangelization. In the conversation between Bp. Barron and the Protestant philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig, Craig almost scoffed at the idea that we can merely evangelize through beauty. Craig's experience (and his reference to sociological data to support his experience) is that people leave the faith or question the faith because they perceive it to be intellectually bankrupt. The moral bankruptcy of ecclesiastical figures then "seals the deal" on their leaving the practice of religion. In Craig's estimation (and many of his colleagues who have spent decades in Christian philosophy and evangelization work), people need the assurance and proof that the Christian faith has deep, intellectual anchors, and that these anchors have real application to daily living. While beauty might appeal and draw a person in, that intuitive attraction needs to be fleshed out conceptually if the person is to stay since intuitions, like emotions, are fleeting, but convictions rest on habits of thinking.

Hence in Barron's approach, one can see that a "Catholic" commentary on culture and the arts is interesting and provides much food for thought, it doesn't actually explain why the Catholic faith is true or how the Catholic conception of religious life applies to daily living. A commentary on a movie or a song may serve a springboard for an interesting conversation and may open one's aesthetic appreciations, it is hard to perceive that such an approach would have anything close to the corrective effects that Craig's and other apologists' approach has been, which directly addresses the errors of thinking in modern society and how these errors in turn trickle down into wider culture.

To be fair, the approaches of Barron and Craig are not mutually exclusive, and these two men are approaching their goals based on their very different experiences. It is conceivable that some complementary, third way or tiered method of evangelization that makes use of both approaches may be conceived and developed, but this very need to do so, and the technical precision with which it must be done for philosophical and theological accuracy, affirm my initial contention: the theology of evangelization is fundamentally disconnected from the practice of it.

The Church in fact had encountered this difficulty with Catholic Action. Fervent Catholic men and women leading political causes on behalf of Christ the King ended up being more political than Catholic, and the Church was often pressed into the difficult decision of how to support these movements in the midst of very difficult political maneuvering from the 19th century and on. Reflecting on the role of Catholic Action, perhaps one may say that the multifaceted causes that feed political and social movements are almost impossible to fully analyze especially in the moment, and an apostolic effort to steer or influence those movements, to avoid getting lost in the uncertainty of the present, must remain firmly grounded on the supernatural foundation of prayer, trust in God, and sacrifices. And the fruits of one's efforts may not be seen in one's lifetime since these movements were centuries in the making.

And for a third example, it has often been remarked that Catholic morality has nothing to do with daily life. What this sentiment typically means is something twofold: 1) the Church has nothing to do with how I conduct my private or public life; and 2) the convoluted, casuistic reasoning of theological writings has little application for my daily living since there is no one to translate that reasoning into concrete norms suitable for a lay audience.

Of course, the first half of the sentiment is completely wrong and predicated on the success of post-Enlightenment liberalism + the way of life made possible by industrial, technical, medical advances (=modernity), but the second half is often reflecting a truth. The moral reasoning that upheld Catholic living increasingly not only disagreed with modern moral sentiments, but it also increasingly had nothing to do with how modern moral frameworks conceived and articulated themselves and hence nothing to do with how people went about their daily moral decision-making once those frameworks trickled down into popular culture. These are points far better articulated and discussed by Alasdair MacIntyre in his works for the past 40 years. 

In other words, the arguments of Humanae Vitae literally have nothing to say to the "modern man" (whatever that means). It is inconceivable to a modern person how metaphysical and theological arguments around the nature of the marital act could have conclusions against acts like contraception since the marital act is not even conceived as reserved to marriage, and certainly not with any outdated metaphysical or theological accoutrements.

Pro-life arguments often take a mostly secular line of reasoning and not even from natural law considerations but arguments from the science/biology of conception, the application of a liberal society's conception of human rights and dignity, etc. One can retroactively or anachronistically apply natural law "tailoring" to those argumentative approaches, but for the pro-life movement to have such widespread support, it must fundamentally appeal to modern sentiments: liberalism, science, dignity, rights, etc. These all make the most sense within a Catholic metaphysics, but they cannot be articulated as such by the widespread; otherwise we would lose the support of the Evangelicals and pro-life secularists, and the movement would most likely fall apart. Hence one even has the paradox that abortion is conceivable as a "right" only within a liberal paradigm and yet one argues against that right using the same paradigm that makes it possible. Within a Catholic milieu, there would be no possible way of thinking that one had a "right" to abortion and hence no need to argue against it using the same conceptual framework.

But regardless, moral arguments from the Catholic tradition are stereotypically caricaturized as debates on "how many angels dance on the head of a pin." To summarize: they are useless, impractical, academic, convoluted, etc.

This all of course being a long-winded preface to my next consideration, the morality surrounding the Covid vaccine. To be continued...