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July 10, 2006
RIP
For all the intellectual panache, however, there was something more sobering about Philip Rieff, for which the right word may be prophetic. While we were preoccupied with our therapeutic games, it went largely unnoticed that our culture died some while back; the ideas, habits, and traditions that sustained and vivified it have been shattered and can’t be put back together. Culture began with renunciation and ended with the therapeutic renunciation of renunciation.
Rieff, a Jew, believed that Christianity supplied the best bet for a sustainable culture, but that’s all gone now. In a 2005 interview with the Chronicles of Higher Education, he says he does not believe that an authentic religious culture could be resurrected, no matter how hard we might try. Following Marx, Weber, and Freud, he argues that modern prosperity, cities, bureaucracy, and science have completely transformed the terrain of human experience. People who try to practice orthodox Christianity and Judaism today, he says, inevitably remain trapped in the vocabulary of therapy and self-fulfillment. “I think the orthodox are role-playing,” he says. “You believe because you think it’s good for you, not because of anything inherent in the belief. I think that the orthodox are in the miserable situation of being orthodox for therapeutic reasons.
I read The Triumph of the Therapeutic in college - for a course on evil, I believe. It was good that I read it - saved me from a few useless intellectual detours, I believe.
(Rieff's first marriage was to Susan Sontag, btw)
According to Fr. Guy at Shouts in the Piazza, liturgical scholar Fr. Aidan Kavanagh, OSB, has passed away.
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Posted by Amy Welborn | Permalink
Comments
"You believe because you think it’s good for you, not because of anything inherent in the belief."
Not a contradiction. What sort of weirdo would believe because it's bad for him?
Ultimately, we believe because we think we'll be happy (with God, in Heaven). There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I suppose what we need now is a renunciation of the renunciation of renunciation. We need to preach the paradox of the Cross again - suffering and self-giving love is what leads to authentic human happiness and flourishing.
Posted by: Tom Harmon at Jul 10, 2006 11:15:21 AM
he says he does not believe that an authentic religious culture could be resurrected, no matter how hard we might try.
This would be true regardless. Only God can resurrect a revival. But I understand his skepticism and I appreciate his views on finding sufficiency in God as it pertains to culture. We need more people asking tough quesitons like this.
Brad
Posted by: Broken Messenger at Jul 10, 2006 11:22:03 AM
I, for one, have never understood this kind of reflective pessimism. I've engaged in it, but always end up rejecting it.
I remember (with great satisfaction) talking to a friend at work who was really down - I mean suicidally down - about the state of the world in 1987.
Off the top of my head, I remarked that, for all we knew, the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall could come crashing down tomorrow. She laughed politely, as in "nice try, but we all know that's not going to happen."
There's intellectual pride in thinking we know just how badly everything is going to turn out because we're all modern and educated.
Posted by: doctor J at Jul 10, 2006 11:31:35 AM
In the short term, Rieff has hit the nail on the head -- So much of contemporary Christianity is saturated with the therapeutic mindset.
For example, here in straight-laced Omaha, we are subjecting our youth group at church to the blandishments of "The DNA of Relationships". They will learn what aspects of these 4 animals -- lion, golden retriever, otter and beaver -- appear in their personalities. Ugh.
In the long term, though, there is hope. Some journalist (the name escapes me) has written a book about young Christians who discovered afresh Orthodoxy in their various denominations. I believe that more and more people will slowly come to realize the bankruptcy of the therapeutic mentaltiy and will be searching for the transcendental.
And for the cultural philosophers there is "The End of the Modern World" by Romano Guardini. Bracing stuff.
Posted by: De Profundis at Jul 10, 2006 12:03:52 PM
Tom Harmon,
You said:
"'You believe because you think it’s good for you, not because of anything inherent in the belief'
Not a contradiction. What sort of weirdo would believe because it's bad for him?"
You are right to point out that in some cases our hopes can legitimately influence the will in believing. But I think we need to distinguish between a few things regarding faith:
1) assent to the truths of faith because they are revealed by God as the result of an influx of grace (supernatural assent)
--This is the theological virtue of faith, which is a gift from God.
2) intellectual assent to the claim that a given proposition is revealed by God as the result of an examination of the evidence (e.g. reliability of the Gospels, Christ's miracles, etc.)
--This is acquired (human) faith, which is not saving faith but can provide an occasion for God giving the grace of faith as a theological virtue.
I think Rieff's point holds with respect to (2). While it is true that our hopes might cause us to believe that something is revealed by God, this does not provide any rational justification for thinking it is revealed by God. Suppose I hope that I can get to heaven without having to repent of my sins. This might lead me to believe in just the kind of touchy-feely therapeutic religion that Rieff is talking about. If our hopes are disordered, they will cause us to believe only in those religious claims that suit us ("I go to this church because it satisfies my needs"). I think Rieff was pointing out that one must adhere to a claim because one has reasons for thinking it was revealed by God. This provides justification for believing it regardless of our fluctuating emotional states. He seems to be claiming that this whole notion of believing something b/c its true is pushed aside in a religious culture that uses the language of therapy.
Sorry this post was so long.
Posted by: Brad C at Jul 10, 2006 12:35:49 PM
he may not be that far off, somewhat similar thinking is why people like Von Balthasar, Ratinger, etc have said the future of the church will be in these small groups that will live vibrant faith and engage the world. this more remnant theory is not pessimistic, just accepting the sign of the times and realizes the church will not live in a catholic culture like the middle ages or reformation times for sometime to come. and it is not the first time the church has found itself in this predicament. it was St Benedict and other humble layman who made small monasteries of intense spiritual life that saved the church and paved the way for the future catholic culture of the middle ages.
Posted by: ihidaya at Jul 10, 2006 12:59:44 PM
Has anybody been asked by their confessor "why did you do such and such" and then you hear yourself describe your actions as similar to a particular psychological disorder? Tourette's syndrome, obsessive-compulsive, depression, anxiety, all are concepts that have replaced the old ethical psychology with a therapeutic one.
Posted by: Kevin Jones at Jul 10, 2006 1:56:42 PM
Religion and culture,
or, I would rather say Church and Society,
are two different things.
Sometimes in history they are in substantial agreement with each other,
and sometimes not.
Sometimes in history they support each other,
and sometimes not.
But it is important to remember that they are distinct things of very different natures.
I believe our very wise Pope Benedict pointed this out clearly in the second half of his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est."
It is not the mission of the Church to produce a "religious culture."
It is the job of the church to form religious individuals.
If those individuals then have to live their lives and witness in a secular, God-hating culture, well, that is not a failure of Church or religion.
The Church was born into a couple centuries of fierce persecution from the surrouding culture.
Posted by: Old Zhou at Jul 10, 2006 2:05:50 PM
Kevin, I'm never asked in the confessional why I committed a sin. I've always thought that a good thing about confession. The only priest who ever approached the question of "why" didn't ask, but assumed he knew the answer. I've since tried to avoid him when lining up for shriving.
Posted by: cricket at Jul 10, 2006 2:36:19 PM
Tourette's syndrome, obsessive-compulsive, depression, anxiety, all are concepts that have replaced the old ethical psychology with a therapeutic one.
Yes but like it or not illness exists. And culpability can be diminished. The Catechism says: "The imputability or responsibility for an action can be diminished or nullified by ignorance, duress, fear, and other psychological or social factors." So it seems a legit question in the confessional in as far as the priest is trying to determine culpability. Sure it can and is abused, but it can also be abused the other way -- the flip side of a therapeutic culture are the Christian cults where if you are depressed it's a sign you ain't praying hard enough or you simply don't have enough faith.
Posted by: TSO at Jul 10, 2006 2:49:01 PM
The thing is, even if I personally should refuse Christ's mercy and go to Hell, that wouldn't make Christianity any less true. Even if it didn't do me personally any good, it would still be Good. Even if my way of approaching orthodox Christianity is the wrong way, that wouldn't be that the right way didn't exist.
And since God does exist and reveal Himself and the right way to worship and believe, and since He has promised that at least an eensy-beensy Church will survive and He'll be with it till the end of the world... well, it's a bit soon to turn our faces to the wall.
It is, of course, traditional in my mother's family to announce that one has one foot in the grave just about as soon as one becomes middle-aged. Since my mom's side of the family is rather longlived, they tend to outlive the very doctors and friends to whom they announce this.
Just so, I think the people announcing imminent death for their civilization are in fact the ones with a healthy civilization. The ones who say "peace, peace" when there is no peace, and who think civilization will go on forever exactly the way they want it, are the ones who are really close to civilization death.
Posted by: Maureen O'Brien at Jul 10, 2006 2:50:36 PM
"You believe because you think it’s good for you, not because of anything inherent in the belief."
I'm over 60. It never occurred to me to not go to Mass on Sunday because "I didn't get anything out of it." What that phrase means is "I didn't feel anything positive." Well, sometimes I didn't feel like getting up with a sick child because I was tired, sometimes I didn't feel like going to school because it was boring, sometimes I don't feel like obeying the speed limit because I'm in a hurry. We have put "feelings" on a pedastol and the current culture does not question that.
Currently, Catholics I know are mistaking how angry they are at bishops for the pedophile scandal with not believing the faith.
Is it true? That is the question. Whether you like your bishop has nothing to do with whether the Catholic Faith is TRUE!!! That's why we are losing people - they want to be nurtured and they mistakenly equate individual leaders' character with whether the Faith itself is valid.
I know whereof I speak because I left the Church for ten years due to anger with parish priests who wanted to shuffle me off to counselors when I wanted to discuss the church law implications of an unwanted civil divorce. Even the priests I talked with could not differentiate between the emotional issues of my marriage and my wish to intellectually clarify my standing with the church in the event of an unwanted civil divorce.
Most Catholics I know have family and emotional attachments to the Church and don't know much about what it actually teaches. I think B16 is right to see that we may have wait out the present age.
Posted by: Julia at Jul 10, 2006 10:37:56 PM
"Sure it can and is abused, but it can also be abused the other way -- the flip side of a therapeutic culture are the Christian cults where if you are depressed it's a sign you ain't praying hard enough or you simply don't have enough faith."
But it seems the therapeutic ethos supplanted not the culty ethos, but the common Christian ethos where people could better recognize the nature of the virtues and their opposites.
Posted by: Kevin Jones at Jul 11, 2006 1:31:39 AM
