Christianity in contemporary society...

Dear friends,

Over my two score and nineteen year life span so far I've witnessed many interesting political campaigns and events. I've even been involved in a few of them. In all that time though I don't think I have witnessed anything as extraordinary as what I witnessed on Channel Ten last night.

I only got to watch the program, "Cool Aid", by accident because I was not going to subject myself to an hour of the singing budgie on the ABC. What an educating experience it was?

And I don't necessarily mean I learned anything new about Climate Change on this program entitled "Cool Aid" which was all about climate change and which was screened nationwide on the channel with greatest market penetration of the under 35 age cohort.

I would bet that if John Howard hasn't already lost the coming Federal election at the end of this year, his fate was absolutely sealed on Sunday night. I honestly do not believe the producers of this program set out to change the Federal government though. Like reformed cigarette smokers, or tub-thumping tele-evangelists, the plastic boys and girls of commercial television have suddenly got "religious" about an issue that only a few months ago was way off the mainstream political agenda.

Honestly, I don't think I have ever witnessed in my entire life the way in which a major issue has moved as quickly as this one of climate change and global sustainability has from being a concern of the social and political "change-agent elite" in society to the point where it is the currency that is on the lips of the hoons in our most socially and economically disadvantaged suburbs. That will be the effect of that two-hour, extravagently-produced special aired by Network Ten last night.

We live in fascinating times...

We live in fascinating times. Researchers tell us that the speed of life is increasing. Once upon a time it took centuries for any new social or technological development to be "taken up" by society until it was embedded into the lives of the ordinary masses in society. Social and political change is even slower than technological change. It took decades from the invention of photography at the end of the nineteenth century until every family in the Western world owned a camera. Today the take-up of new technological inventions, such as the i-pod and mobile phone, takes place at breath-taking speed.

Never have I seen though as rapid movement with what is basically a major political sea-change in the mindset of the national and international community as what we are witnessing at this very moment with the fear, almost panic, that has been unleashed by climate change and a new consciousness about using the earth's resources more sustainably.

	Al Gore – one of the high-profile guests on the Cool Aid program

Don't misunderstand me. I welcome this change most enthusiastically. At the same time I am simply gobsmacked at the way in which these ideas, which not too long ago, the majority of the population would have been largely ignorant about and disinterested, and were only seen as concerns of the passionate fringe political elements in society like Bob Brown and the Greens, have moved to centre stage. When the most down-market of our commercial television networks pours the funds into a lavish program in the week's most expensive broadcast slot you know something extraordinary is underway in the base thinking paradigm from which an entire nation does it's thinking.

Bob Brown, Peter Garrett, and the scientistis and social activists who've slaved away for decades trying to raise awareness of these issues must feel as though they've been run over by an out-of-control steam train. The way the wind has swung around to fill their sails has been astonishing.

Are there lessons in this for the Church?

I haven't chosen to write on this matter this morning though purely for its social or political interest and intrigue. There's also possibly a valuable lesson in this for the communication challenge the Church has been facing in contemporary society.

If there is an abiding question in my life it is one connected with how ideas germinate in society and eventually either get rejected or they are taken up and absorbed into the mainstream of culture. That's essentially what happened in the case of Christianity. George Orwell, one of my favourite writers, used to speculate about the large number of writers he'd come across in his life whose ideas became famous for a brief period and then the writers, and their ideas, faded into obscurity. He was intrigued also with what gave some ideas legs and others never found them. Marxism, for a time, looked as though it might literally take over the world but eventually it died. Christianity began in extremely inauspicious circumstances and it struggled for centuries but then suddenly flourished to the point where it became one of the key founding sets of ideas that formed what we now lable as Western civilisation.

It is intriguing watching this present phenomenon as the air-heads and pin-heads of populism suddenly get "religious" about the environment, ecology, climate change and sustainability. Is "truth" the arbiter that enables ideas to gain traction in the societal mainstream? One suspects not — at least by itself or in the short term. One could cite many crackpot ideas that have gained huge currency in large sectors of society for significant periods to quickly refute that.

In the long run though I tend to the view that "truth" is the final arbiter. We're not talking here though of what might be called "populist truth" or "what the majority thinks is 'the truth' at this particular moment in time". Collectively though human civilisation does have a mechanism for discerning "truth" in a much longer time frame. It's something we perhaps label as "the wisdom of the ages".

Reading some of the excellent contributions to our discussion on Catholic education drives home to me how institutionalised Catholicism has "lost traction" in the mainstream of contemporary society. If, or when, it does regain traction I suspect we will see something happen very similar to this curious phenomenon we are watching unfold at the moment as the masses in society suddenly discover the environment, ecology, sustainability and a sense of self-responsibility.

I am not sure, as Ian Elmer is suggesting this morning, that indifferentism (defined in the strict way he uses the term) is the whole answer as to why the Church has lost traction. I do agree with him though that it is a huge problem. We need to be asking the question: why has religious "indifferentism" become such a powerful idea in the minds of so many all of a sudden?

I would love nothing more than to see the authentic Catholic "Way" of viewing life and our cosmos reasserting itself in society. I don't do so out of any feelings of tribal loyalty though. I believe that "Way" literally does offer the world the best perspective from which to view the world. I suspect one of the major reasons why it has lost traction at the moment is, as I suggested the other day, that collectively we have begun living a lie. The guideposts have been substituted for the deity as the object of our worship and devotion. Rather than presenting itself ultimately as the guardian of truth in society, the institution has become more concerned with trying to defend its reputation that it is supposed to be the guardian of truth and it has taken its eye off "truth" itself. It has been trying to bolster its own status and claims to infallibility rather than letting the truth itself demonstrate that it does have a legitimate claim to be the guardian and repository of "the wisdom of the ages". The sexual abuse scandals have, hopefully, been the final shattering of our self-delusion.

From watching the unfolding of this present political pantomine going on over climate change I think there are a number of valuable lessons that we should be keenly observing if we care about this mission we are charged with of "bringing the Good News to ALL people".

The greatest claim Catholicism can make that might give it traction again out in the highways and biways of wider society is its claim to be "the defender and discerner" of "ultimate truth". When some within her ranks endeavour to elevate a new claim that "we also never make mistakes or change our thinking in the light of later knowledge given to the human family by God" as a higher truth than the one claimed in the previous sentence we have seen just how quickly an institution that once dominated the world can fade into irrelevance and 85% of its congregation just drift out the door no longer prepared to listen to what "Holy Mother Church" has to say.

Blessings, Brian

LINK: www.ten.com.au/coolaid

Brian Coyne is the editor and publisher of Catholica Australia.

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©2007 Brian Coyne

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