Between Relativism and Fundamentalism: Religious Resources for a Middle Position

Edited by Peter L. Berger, eerdmans.com, 209 pages.

Between Relativism and Fundamentalism, a collection of essays by various authors, offers an academic, sociological approach, showing how changes and trends in Christianity were part of larger society-wide changes and trends. The authors retrace some of the errors made by Christianity as it has proclaimed the gospel in a modern world often skeptical of religious belief.

Berger for one accuses Christians of focusing too heavily on morality, and not enough on God. Christians have, he observes, equated morality with spirituality. In the rush to fit into the modern world, they have forgotten to proclaim the simple good news of the risen Christ.

The book's strength is its ability to see weaknesses in the current state of church affairs, rather than the situation from 2 or 3 decades ago. For instance, the authors discuss how the modern push towards individualism in all areas of life has deeply influenced the churches and their messages. Fundamentalists have offered people who feel overly isolated and vulnerable a sense of security and safety, and strong community. This comes at the cost of becoming closed to others, to society at large. A negative result is a we-they mentality.

Fundamentalism, despite claiming to be traditional, is thus a very modern phenomenon. Truly traditional people, from traditional places with corresponding lifestyles, tend towards a middle ground. Outsiders or the unconventional are noted, but not bullied or rejected. Traditional communities tend, in fact, to give such people a place somewhere in the community. Fundamentalists make no such attempt at openness.

Relativism, a more obvious product of the modern world, presents the social sciences, such as sociology, economics, and psychology, as the replacement for traditional wisdom and religious practice, and promotes a sense of subjectivity. These are the people always talking about the latest psychological study. Objective truth is rejected, including the deposit of faith proclaimed by the Catholic church.

Relativism, produced from the mixture of cultures in modern culture that we often call pluralism, tries to create civic peace by lessening the voice of tradition, especially religious tradition, and by celebrating every sort of alternative lifestyle. It claims falsely to be value-free. In reality, it has very strong values, such as accepting anything non white male Christian, and regarding everyone who is not a straight white male as a victim of society (its various -isms).

Berger makes an interesting point, perhaps seen by Catholics on Sunday, of the tendency in an age of relativism to reduce church membership and religious identity to a kind of spiritual consumerism. People shop around for their favorite priest, the one with the jokes, charisma, or shortest mass. This consumer assertiveness reduces the sense of duty and responsibility.

One author notes, "modernization can be described as a gigantic shift in the human condition from one of fate to one of choice." Parish-shopping, among other practices, reflects the "de-institutionalization" of modern society, wherein people no longer feel automatic obligations to their institutions of birth, such as the church in which they were raised or the parish in their neighborhood.

The book also offers hope to the community- and tradition-minded, showing a more authentic way forward. It shows the current of modern beliefs and attitudes against which Catholics are swimming.

Monastic Observances: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 5

By Thomas Merton, 335 pages, litpress.org.

The intellectual and spiritual life Merton sought for himself and others, reflected in Monastic Observances 5, portrays the best not only of Merton but of the Catholic tradition he so loved. The book's material was taken from the notes Merton used for teaching as Novice Master at the Cistercian Monastery in Kentucky, Gethsemane.

His keen psychological insights into the contemplative life does not mirror modern pop psychology or the social sciences. Rather, they reflect Merton's own monastic lifestyle, and the training it demanded, as well as his reading of the Bible, Church Fathers, and medieval scholastics. He has broadened Catholic theology and spiritual practice with his integration of the Eastern Fathers.

Above all, Merton calls his brothers to a practical life. This differs sharply, surprisingly, from the utilitarian approach to life offered to us all by present-day capitalists. He cites the exterior "pitfalls" of laziness, sloppiness, messiness, and also noisiness. Doors should be closed quietly; brothers should walk without noise; and eating should be modest and mannerly.

Much of this contrasts with our own day, even within the Church at present. He warns, for instance, against "subjectivism," the practice of giving our own viewpoints a high regard. When discussing the Eucharist, he warns against judging one's own feelings too much when receiving communion. Psychological games, working oneself into a certain feeling, is a meaningless distraction.

His discussion on the Eucharist is detailed, full of practical advice for how to best approach the Lord's Supper, yet also highlighting the basic theology behind the sacrament: "the Mass is the Passion of Christ. When I am assisting at Mass, I am present at the Passion... The Mass becomes, in fact, a meditation on the Passion."

Merton rejects a psychological or sentimental view of the Mass or the Eucharist. Something happens at Mass, specifically with the Eucharist. He explains this in detail, discussing the prayers used, as well as the meaning behind the rubrics of the Mass.

Again, he rejects sentimentalism, noting that the fruits of the Mass include increased charity in the heart and actions of the believer, "quite apart from any feelings or conscious desires of charity."

Merton's simplicity also affects his view of lectio divina, or sacred reading, when Christians read not simply to fill our brains but as a spiritual practice. In lectio divina, the prayerful style of reading practiced by monks, the point is not to finish a book or arrive at some higher intellectual understanding, but to grow in the spiritual life, to have a deeper relationship with God.

Reading in this way flows into the daily meditation and prayer of a monk, which is centered in the Mass. Thus Merton envisions a unity. The monk's day should not be fragmented into work, pray, work, pray, eat, and so on. The bells, which are a call to holiness according to Merton, call the man from one meditative, prayerful action, such as his daily work routine, to another meditative, prayerful action, such as evening prayer.

Centered on the Eucharist and the internal unity of the man, which feeds the external unity of the monastic community, Monastic Observances 5 shows Merton's deep respect for the Catholic tradition and suspicion of innovation. He was a most unrevolutionary monk.

Knight: The Medieval Warrior's (Unofficial) Manual

By Michael Prestwich, 208 pages, thamesandhudson.com.

The medieval knight was more than just a soldier; he was a soldier of Christ. Despite the barbarity of those times, prelates often succeeded in tempering the almost constant violence. In many ways, the medieval Latin Church fostered peace, including by instilling a code of conduct for warriors.

Knight is a fun read for older children and for adults, as it enters into the chivalric world as a kind of guidebook, addressing the aspiring Christian knight in the fourteenth-century.

The rite of initiation into knighthood included a fair amount of religious preparation, even if being knighted was not a sacrament. The culture of chivalry was the culture of Christianity, mixed with Islamic, ancient Greco-Roman, and Germanic warrior cultures.

The author, a contemporary British historian, shows how steeped in Christianity chivalry was. Both knighthood and Christianity were seen as the good fight, where the soldier often could not live up to expectations. Both paths demanded much of the participant, and failure was easy to come by, because of both external and internal causes:

"There is a difficult balance to be struck between the ideals and the practicalities of warfare. The knight is challenged and often defeated on the battlefield by common soldiers armed with bow and pike; he fights on foot more than on horseback, and the guiding principles of chivalry often seem in reality to become those of guile, deceit, profit and cruelty."

Evils such as deceit and cruelty were evils only because Christianity said they were. Knights were, in other words, forced to live up to Christian ideals, even when fighting and killing.

In fact, service to the Church and Christian ideals formed the core of medieval knighthood. The day before the knighting ceremony the man wore a red tunic, symbolizing his willingness "to shed blood in defending the faith." Black socks symbolized the knight's mortality, a white belt his purity and chastity, and a red cloak his humility. After putting all of this on, he went to a church, sometimes all night, for a vigil.

When knights fought for the Church, it may have been as part of evangelizing, as with the Teutonic Knights who were fighting the pagan Lithuanians in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with full crusading privileges granted them by the papacy.

Knights also fought under crusading privileges at this time in Iberia, where Granada and a few other areas were not yet under Christian control. Yet the Muslims there were battle-hardened, having fought the Reconquista for many centuries.

A third area of Christian knightly fighting was against the Turks in the Balkans. Because of the military skills of the Turks, the Hungarian and Serbian rulers, sometimes aided by French, Burgundian, or English knights, often did badly.

Just as a Mass preceded the knighting ceremony, so knights throughout their lives practiced Christian piety, attending Mass and paying for Masses to be said after they died. These men played an integral role in Christendom, and just as they fractured as a Christian fighting class by the fourteenth-century, so Christendom itself would fracture by the early sixteenth-century with the Protestant Reformation, by which time the ideals of knighthood had started to unravel.

Prestwich captures the spirit of the age in an accessible way for all readers.

Jungle Warfare: A Basic Field Manual for Christians in Sales

By Christopher A. Cunningham, thomasnelson.com, 209 pages.

Jungle Warfare, which can be read by everyone and not only salespeople, evokes the ancient Christian belief that the spiritual life is a life of warfare. Good and evil have opposed each other since the beginning, and Christ has already won the battle. As his followers, we have chosen the winning side, but the battle in this world, mysteriously, continues.

Every day is a battle. Cunningham warns that, like the soldiers fighting WWII in the jungle, we must be prepared and vigilant at all times. The enemy can spring up at any time, and if we are out of shape or unfocused he can easily defeat us. We are as strong as we think. Our strength comes from being prepared ahead of time through Christ.

The author warns, "you also battle a deadly spiritual enemy who prowls around like a jungle cat wishing he could devour your soul. He and his commandos lie in wait, scheming and plotting about how they can throw anything in your path that will not only destroy your career but also your reputation, relationships, and rewards."

Just as Christ battled evil in the world, so we must do spiritual battle with the Lord on our side. But the biggest war is within, just as it is for the soldier in the jungle, where he confronts dehydration, terrible insects, cramps from insufficient salt intake, dirty water, and his own self-doubt and disorganization. Staying fit and focused are the most important ingredients to success.

Wisely, the author closely links the fear of God with the sense of sin. The world, even the Christian world, has lost this sense, while simultaneously losing the awe, reverence, and worship of God that we can call the fear of God. God has become a big fluffy plaything who makes us feel better and justifies our actions and politics, whereas each human has become the sum total of her emotions. When we talk about God, we tend to discuss how God makes us feel better and gives in to our wishes.

Jungle Warfare offers no such God, largely because the Bible offers no such God. Instead, Scripture teaches us a much more militia Christi, spiritual warfare-type of Christian living that places us in the midst of something much more important than our ever-changing sentiments. Cunningham offers readers a Biblical spirituality.

The following words on the spiritual life, then, do not get overly wrapped up in emotions, and instead point us towards a Christ-centered rather than me-and-my-feelings-centered life: "I feel the presence of God's Holy Spirit as He leads me through the jungle in the presence of my enemies. When I go at it alone, I get lost. I start battling man, nature, and spirit -- and I usually get into trouble."

In other words, the feelings-centered approach is exactly what not to cultivate in the spiritual life, because we cannot really trust ourselves. Our sinfulness, which can act through our emotions, can easily lead us astray.

The Bible, Cunningham argues, has a battle plan for us to use in our spiritual battle. We must be ever ready to confront the enemy within and the enemy in the world.

Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography

By Amy Frykholm, 147 pages, Paraclete Press.

Julian of Norwich, (1342 – 1416), dissatisfied with an ordinary spiritual life, desired something deeper. Like many saints and theological reformers, she loved Jesus so deeply that she wanted to share in his suffering.

Perhaps this zeal, the author notes, came from her inability to reconcile the sense of God as loving and forgiving with the popular teachings of the medieval church on hell and purgatory. The outbreak of the pestilence, which caused tremendous suffering in Norwich, also contrasted with this merciful image.

Medieval Christians valued suffering as a path to Christ's passion. Julian, like many, wished to share in the Lord's pain physically as well as spiritually.

Wracked with illness in the heat of her spiritual search, she finally had her breakthrough: "in an instant, everything changed. The pain that had preoccupied her for days went away, like the lifting of a curtain. Then the cross that the priest held in front of her face started to bleed...A voice spoke in her vision and said, 'With this the Fiend is overcome.'" She realized that she was
"watching Christ die," and had received her request of suffering along with Jesus on the cross.

This countered the heavy sense of sin with which she, as a member of medieval society, had been burdened.

Julian's Franciscan spiritual advisor played a vital role in her spiritual development from this time on, showing her how to pray through the Bible (lectio divina), encouraging her to write her visions and thoughts down, and supporting her decision to become an anchoress, a female hermit tied to a parish church under the protection of the local bishop.

As the years passed, rather than forgetting about the visions, her memory of them was enriched through her prayer and study, and she found deeper and deeper meanings to them. Yet their essential message, about God's mercy, remained the same.

Readers get a sense that Julian's work, including her spiritual counseling to visitors, was not without its dangers. Her writing was accomplished entirely outside of ecclesiastical structures, even if it was done with the advice of her counselor.

The religious unrest that would eventually explode into the Reformation and the resulting bloody religious wars was already deeply felt. Authorities, civil and religious, regarded women leaders and thinkers as a threat, so Julian must have been scared. Frykholm reminds the reader of the great new direction that Julian's theology was taking.

Led by the Franciscans and their ministry to the growing urban areas of Europe, the church was focusing more and more on the inner state. While the sacraments retained their central role in church life, the friars encouraged reflection on one's personal relationship with Jesus.

Frykholm shows how this change included women, who were taking religious matters into their own hands more and more, though with a trusted spiritual advisor. The friars often allowed such people to speak freely and to develop a critical self-awareness.

As Frykholm shows, Julian of Norwich was only one of many, women and men, who were challenging the medieval Church's institutional structures. This springtime of mysticism included The Cloud of Unknowing, Thomas a Kempis' Imitatio Christi, and a host of fourteenth-century mystics who, though obedient to the Church and its sacramental system, practiced a more interior spirituality.

Julian of Norwich played a central role in this revolution.

Infinitive Bandwidth: Encountering Christ in the Media

By Eugene Gan, emmausroad.com, 148 pages.

"[I]t often seems as if the most surefire way to win an Academy Award is to make a film devoid of hope, devoid of light," Franciscan University of Steubenville professor Gan notes. He offers a remedy based on the consistent, balanced teaching of the magisterium, which since the 1930s has been outlining its vision of the underlying principles and basic functions of the media.

Gan grounds his argument in basic theology. God is good, humanity is fallen, and media can inspire us to do good or evil. Beware, in the age of relativism, because money, political correctness, and high production standards are the greatest virtues of movie, video, or website production. That leaves prudence, charity, hope, faith and the other cardinal virtues out of sight and out of mind. Gan, conversely, uses these virtues as the key to understanding Catholic teaching on media and its uses.

He weaves psychological insights throughout the book, demonstrating the powerful psychology behind the media. Sitcom viewers, for instance, can become quite attached to their favorite character, and when they find out that he is gay, their perception of homosexuality can be jarred. Media works at the sensory level, so induces emotional rather than intellectual responses. People begin to have different feelings about certain issues, such as gay marriage, and then begin to reason differently. The Church, then, appears distant and preachy when it calls homosexuality sinful and disordered. How can the Church be so judgmental about gay guys like the lovable one on TV?

Yet the media's emotive power can also work for the good, as demonstrated with Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Not only movies possess such power: "truth can be woven into a ... song, a video game, even a Facebook page. It can be made part of a story. And the story can do what we can't. It can connect with people on the level of emotion.... It catches people off their guard, shining a light on truths they didn't know existed," Gan notes.

The media, in other words, offers Christians an infinite number of possibilities for presenting their case to the world. The Church encourages us to use such technologies to their full potential. Gan argues convincingly that Catholics, especially parishes, should update their websites and use more interactive media technology. He stays close to practicalities, listing ways that they can do this.

Be interactive. Avoid leading internet users towards long-winded pdf files, and offer lots of video, hyperlinks, and opportunity for comments. Gan notes that most parish websites offer no way for members to sign up for activities online, and few offer blogs. A lack of blogging gives the impression that parishes are cold, indifferent, and unable to connect. The daily lives and insights of parish leaders and priests are not online, plugging in to the lives of others online.

Blogs are fantastic ways to get in touch with people, and Gan offers the example of two Catholics who have talked about their faith and families in their blogs, making them popular and effective online evangelists. Their highs and lows, interspersed with Catholic-centered wisdom, relates with people encountering the same problems.

Readers of Infinite Bandwidth get the strong sense that online evangelism is not the buzzword in Catholic circles that it should be. It has not been incorporated into the New Evangelism in the way that, perhaps, the theology of the body has. No sense of urgency pushes Catholic leaders to give more power and dynamism to their online message. Unfortunately, without these interactive possibilities, parishes are not connecting, whereas websites promoting easy sex, meaningless violence, and narcissistic attitudes are flourishing, reaching out as never before.

Gan's theological and ethical discussions, which form the foundation of his attitude towards media, are effective and to-the-point. When explaining the evils of pornography, he sounds like the university professor he is who has had to explain tirelessly the evils of pornography to questioning, skeptical young adults: "Pornography reduces human beings to the level of animals, controlled by appetites and motivated by little more than a selfish desire for pleasure."

Sexting is the other terrible online evil destroying young people's sense of self as well as their ability to relate with others in a healthy way. Sexting reveals the lack of a fundamental orientation towards the world, oneself, and good and evil. Devoid of this moral faculty, teens fall prey to peer pressure and their own, still-maturing, emotions. Gun concludes, "Only in a world made up solely of other fifteen-year-olds does a teenage girl think it's a good idea to send pornographic pictures of herself to a teenage boy's cell phone." In other words, where the hell are the parents? The teachers? Older brothers or sisters? The Church? Why is even the most fundamental moral guidance not given today? Why aren't teens developing even the most basic notions of right and wrong?

The answer is that they, like all of us, are becoming increasingly disconnected from the world, from reality, even as we twitter and friend and blog away, viewing the world through youtube and skyping free of charge around the world. Gan makes the point repeatedly that these kids are connected digitally and globally like never before, yet disconnected from the reality right in front of their nose like never before. They have Facebook friends from all over but are too easily distracted to read deeply or engage in frank discussions with their parents. They text at the dinner table rather than talk to parents and siblings.

The same reverence for our bodies that is missing in sexting and pornography is also missing in "slasher films" such as Saw and the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, Gan notes. Such movies offer an anti-Christian image of humans, refuting the notion that we are made in God's image and therefore should cultivate "a willingness to give and sacrifice for others, and the ability to control, restrain, and properly direct one's desires." These Catholic ideals are hardly mainstream in our age of nihilism, and the media often reflects the precise opposite.

The Church counters nihilism, a form of hopelessness, by calling for respecting the dignity of the human being. Even Catholic teens and young adults, Gan notes, follow this nihilistic tendency, and have little clue as to how they can stop being passive consumers of media and start to shape it more actively and to consume it more critically. They have never thought that they could take more control over the media.

Harshly, he cites studies showing that today's American teens, because of social media which put the individual at the center of their own digital world, are the most narcissistic individuals in the world. He notes the consequence: "many teens don't recognize the potential of media to do anything other than improve their social standing. They don't see it as a tool to spread the Faith or educate themselves about the Napoleonic Wars. They see it as a tool to talk to their friends, listen to music, and simply be entertained." Superficial, they grasp at nothing deeper than the moment and their place in it, satisfied with a digital universe.

Like most of us, they are unaware of the tremendous possibilities for evangelization on offer from today's media. The Internet is a blessing from God if we use it correctly. Their indifference or ignorance of this is a big loss, since today's youth, the author points out, are at the vanguard of the New (Digital) Evangelization. Unlike middle-aged adults, they have been using computers and the Internet all their lives, and are therefore digital natives. The Internet and social media is their realm.

Only they can fully utilize this technology to reach the un- and under-churched, since they speak the language of today's world better than anyone: "We can't make disciples of all men unless we go where those men are -- unless we speak their language, understand how they think, and know how to respond to their unmet needs," Gan cautions.

The power of Infinite Bandwidth, as reflected in the above words, comes from the author's experience as the instructor of these young people at his university. He struggles to mold into evangelical Catholics students who have been raised more by the digital culture, which is largely inspired by money and the Culture of Death.

Christians have allowed the media to shape ourselves, our young people, and society at large for too long. As a first step, we must assert ourselves by being more thoughtful in how we use technology. Next, we can start to shape those very technologies. Our faith should inform our presence in chat rooms, blogs, and social media. Third, we must judge the attitudes behind media, especially with pornography, from a Christian moral standpoint. "[A]ll media and all media technology," Gan notes, "should respect the dignity of the human person; be truth-filled; inspire people towards the good, the true, and the beautiful; be skillfully developed; and be motivated by and rooted in human experience."

Following this, we would be more faithful to the New Evangelization.