The pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, reviewing from a
phenomenological point of view the various forms of atheism, a word
which "is used to signify things that differ considerably from one
another", also contains this note: "There are also those who
never enquire about God; religion never seems to trouble or interest
them at all, nor do they see why they should bother about it" (n.
19). The phenomenon of religious indifference can be recognized in these
words. It is perhaps—many people are inclined to think so today—the
most widespread and, from some standpoints, the most serious form of
unbelief.
Up to now, however, it has also been the form least studied. This is
probably because, more than as a doctrine, even if a negative one with
regard to religion, it appears as a personal attitude, and, what is
more, almost an impalpable one. Hence the opportuneness and urgency of a
more careful and thorough study of the phenomenon.
Indifference is a well-known psychological state of mind. It is
clearly distinguished from ignorance as from rejection, from acceptance
as from desire, from affirmation as from doubt. For example, a traveller
on a train would like to smoke, and asks the others if he may do so. If
there is a foreigner in the compartment who does not understand the
language, he will look at the smoker with greater attention but will not
answer either yes or no. As for the others, some will answer with
consent or with refusal, and some passenger will be content to shrug or
will pay no heed to the question. This last case is the attitude of
indifference.
"Indifference", Antonio Grumelli rightly notes, "is
characterized as disinterestedness and disaffection; the first term
stresses mainly, even if not exclusively, the intellective aspect and
the second one in the same way the volitive aspect. It is quite obvious,
in fact, to recognize in the indifferent attitude a double element, one
of which refers to the intellect and the other to the will".
Among the many definitions that have been given of religious
indifference, I find particularly felicitous the one offered by Goblot
in his Vocabolario filosofico: "Indifference in the
religious or philosophical field is the state of mind which does not
pass judgment, which does not affirm and does not deny, either out of
heedlessness, or out of scepticism.
The psychological foundation of indifference is freedom, which, as we
know, is that sovereignty which man exercises over his own acts and
things. Thanks to freedom man is his own master: free to do or not to
do, to do this or to do that, to pursue this or that aim Animals are not
indifferent because they are not free. They are driven by instinct to
desire or to shun, to operate in one way or in another.
Priority of values
On the psychological plane man is endowed with absolute freedom: he
is supreme with regard to any object and any action. To everything, he
can say yes or no. Therefore he can assume the attitude of indifference
to any person, thing or action.
On the moral and theological plane, on the contrary, human freedom is
not absolute. it is ordained and conditioned by certain aims, such as
the promotion of justice, peace, love and brotherhood. These aims
determine the goodness of the choices that man makes. Therefore on the
moral and theological plane indifference may take on various
connotations: it can be good or bad, praiseworthy or reprehensible. For
example, as regards the murder of Mr Moro or abortion, indifference is
not permissible: on the moral plane these are crimes which must be
severely condemned.
Among the various aims which man is called to fulfil in his life, two
occupy the first place: the improvement of his own person and the glory
of God. He is inclined almost instinctively to carry out the first one,
because every creature is driven to persevere and progress in being.
As for the second one, the glory of God, the duty of fulfilling it is
clear to the believer (who feels surrounded by the fatherly concern and
infinite love of God). But must the same be said also of the
non-believer? Are the atheist, the agnostic, the person who is
indifferent, also bound to glorify God?
Also with regard to religious indifference as to atheism and
agnosticism there are authors such as Scheler, Rahner, Tillich, Grühn,
who question its existence. To their mind the psychical structure of man
is such that it is never possible for it to break off with the Absolute.
"Every man", Werner Grühn writes, "believes in God, and
it does not matter whether he admits it or not. Radical (or
"scientific") atheism is rather an artificial product of
armchair speculation, a theoretical invention of some heads that are not
always among the best".
But most scholars recognize that religious indifference is an
incontrovertible fact which finds its psychological justification in
that absolute freedom which is at man's disposal, thanks to which lie
has also the possibility of driving God out of his own conscience and of
"falling in love" with a finite good, putting it in God's
place and treating it as if it were God.
But is this lack of attention and interest in God legitimate? Is it
admissible?
From the century of Enlightenment onwards, religious indifference has
been invoked as a sign of the intellectual maturity of modern man or as
the condition to realize his perfect liberation. It was claimed that man
had become, or that at least he was on the right way to become,
completely self-reliant and self-sufficient, capable of solving all
problems and of satisfying all desires, without having recourse to God.
Consequently he could, and should, set him aside and behave as if he did
not exist: etsi Deus non daretur.
But two centuries of history have shown the absurdity of this claim.
Modern man, however more advanced and better equipped than all the men
who have preceded him, has not only failed to solve any of his
fundamental problems (justice, brotherhood, peace, happiness, pain,
death, etc.) but he has made them even more acute and deep.
So it is more and more evident that indifference is not the
blossoming of intellectual maturity but the consequence of
superficiality and lack of judgment. So Augustine's testimony is still
valid and relevant today: "Fecisti nos Domine ad te et inquietum
est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te".
Evidence of History
On the philosophical and theological plane, therefore, there is no
justification of religious indifference; whereas it is possible to
enumerate a great many reasons of a cultural, historical, social,
political, economic and even religious nature (such as the shortcomings
and betrayals of believers and of the various religious institutions)
which have fostered its development and spread. Among the reasons that
have had most weight, scholars recall secularization, religious
pluralism, the consumer society, prosperity, lay and laicizing culture,
etc.
On the moral and theological plane, the attitude of religious
indifference must not only be deemed unlawful and blameworthy, but
considered attentively it is seen to be even more serious than atheism.
The latter, in fact, implies a sensitiveness to the religious problem
even if it solves it badly; indifference, on the contrary, denotes such
deep mental obtusity that it cannot even perceive the existence of the
problem. De Lamennais correctly writes: "Indifference... is
systematic ignorance, it is a willful sleep of the soul, which exhausts
its vigour in resisting its own thoughts and in struggling against
inopportune memories; it is a universal lethargy of the moral faculties,
an absolute absence of ideas on what, for man, is most worth
knowing".
This is also the judgment of the Second Vatican Council. Gaudium
et Spes is categorical in affirming: "Without doubt
those who willfully try to drive God from their heart and to avoid all
questions about religion, not following the biddings of their
conscience, are not free from blame" (n. 19).
But in formulating an ethical and theological judgement great
attention must be paid to that willfully to which the text of Gaudium
et Spes refers, since voluntariness is an essential requisite for
moral and theological evaluation. Also in the case of religious
indifference it is necessary to check if voluntariness is present. It
will be seen that very often direct voluntariness does not exist, since
the indifference is the fruit of the social, political and cultural
environment.
We must be careful, however, not to administer too easily general
absolutions from guilt and responsibility, because, as the same Gaudium
et Spes declares: "man is continually being aroused by the
Spirit of God and he will never be utterly indifferent to religion—a
fact proved by the experiences of ages past and plentiful
evidence at the present day. For man will ever be anxious to know, if
only in a vague way, what is the meaning of his life, his activity, and
his death. The very presence of the Church recalls these problems to his
mind. The most perfect answer to these questionings is to be found in
God alone, who created man in his own image and redeemed him from
sin" (n. 41).
For the tenth anniversary of its institution, the Secretariat for
Non-Believers has dedicated an interesting volume to the problem of
religious indifference, the main lines of which I have tried to define
in this article. Its title is: L'indifferenza religiosa (Cittá
Nuova, Roma 1978). Eminent scholars from Italy (Miano, Morra, Grumelli,
De Rosa, Mezzadri) and abroad (Cottier, Defois, Faricy, Kumar Lal, Cuog)
have collaborated in it.
The volume is presented as an interdisciplinary study—philosophico-theological,
psycho-sociological and historical—with reference to related phenomena
such as are those of secularization, agnosticism, systematic atheism,
and with openings to problems of the apostolate and of spiritual life.
Of great interest are the essays on the way in which the phenomenon of
indifference occurs, in view of their specific nature, in non-Christian
religions: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism.
Analysing the philosophical, historical and theological roots of
religious indifference, we were able to see the extreme seriousness of
this disease of the spirit. A great many authors rightly consider it
even more serious than atheism itself. For in the case of indifference
there is not the slightest sensitiveness to the religious problem, while
in the case of atheism the perception of the problem of God persists in
man, who has still the sensation of being pursued and tormented by the
shadow of God.
The psychological condition of indifference being such, it is
understandable that the agents of the apostolate are unable to find
effective remedies against it. In fact there is no worse patient than he
who ignores or pretends to ignore his own illness. On the other hand,
just because it is a question of a very serious disease of the spirit,
those who are spiritually healthy must endeavour with all their might to
free those who are affected by it. In what way?
Treatment of diseases of the spirit is similar to that of diseases of
the body. Now the remedies for the latter are always in proportion to
the causes. Hence the enormous effort of medicine to discover the causes
of the various diseases in order to prepare adequate treatments.
Sense of mystery
In the judgment of historians the cause that has contributed most to
causing God to disappear from the consciences and minds of so many
people and to spreading religious indifference, was the achievements of
science and technique in the last two centuries. These marvellous
achievements served not only to demolish a wrong image of God (the
stop-gap God), but were also instrumentalized to cause God himself to
disappear (death of God). In fact, on the one hand technico-scientific
progress has fostered prosperity, the consumer society, attachment to
the earth, immersion in this world. On the other hand it has brought
forth in man a sense of security, maturity, self-sufficiency and the
conviction that he is able to cope with all problems and all necessities
by himself. In the world of nature, subjugated and manipulated by all
kinds of machines, the marks of man became more and more evident, while
the marks of God became less perceptible. Thus contemplation of nature
gave way to its radical transformation by man.
This set of factors (technico-scientific progress, prosperity, the
consumer society together with a strongly secularized culture, supported
not infrequently by a policy decidedly hostile to religion and
propagandized with those powerful mass media which have been invented in
this century) has caused, especially in Europe and in America, lack of
interest in, indifference to, and ignorance of God's presence, as also
abandonment of the worship due to him.
Reality of God
Therefore if it is desired to defeat religious indifference, it is
necessary in the first place to go back to the causes that produced it
and where necessary eliminate them. Where it is not necessary to
eliminate them (as in the case of technico-scientific progress,
prosperity), one should show that they do not lead necessarily to the
elimination of God, but that, on the contrary, they may even promote
man's meeting with his Creator.
In the first place some serious prejudices must be dispelled. For
example, the prejudice of Scientism, Technicalism, Enlightenment; that
is, the prejudice that human reason is omnipotent, that it can explain
everything and that it is capable of excogitating techniques able to
solve all problems (including the problem of pain, hatred, injustice,
selfishness, death, etc.). As a matter of fact, this prejudice, so
widespread and deep-rooted from the French Revolution to the first World
War, has been struck a hard blow in recent times. In the last few
decades man has realized the limited powers of science and the highly
dangerous nature of some products of technique. Thus he has become
aware, on the one hand, that he is unable to solve some great mysteries
which surround him and, on the other hand, that his inventions can turn
against him and against nature itself.
Secondly, it is necessary to reawaken the sense of wonder in those
who have lost the sense of the sacred and have fallen into religious
indifference. According to Aristotle, the former is the fundamental
condition of all seeking and therefore of all knowledge; it is,
therefore, the primary condition that disposes man to listen to the
voice of the mystery of being and the mystery of God. In nature there is
an infinity of things and phenomena which cause amazement, which arouse
surprise, which fascinate. The sight of the Alps was enough to make even
Voltaire exclaim: "God exists!" But how many other great
things (the galaxies, for example) or little things (such as the cell of
the living being or also the organ of sight), if observed attentively,
arouse admiration and call upon us to glorify the one who produced them.
To hit at religious indifference, it is necessary to sharpen the
sense of wonder in man once more. A.J. Heschel is right when he writes:
"Most of us are like moles that hide, and any waterway we meet is
underground. Few are capable of rising in rare moments above their
own level. But it is in these moments that we discover that the
essence of human existence consists in its being suspended between
heaven and earth...The sensation of being suspended between heaven and
earth is just as necessary in order to be moved by God as a place to
stand was for Archimedes to move the earth. Absolute marvel is for
understanding of the reality of God what clarity and distinction are for
the understanding of mathematical ideas. Deprived of wonder, we remain
deaf to the sublime" (A.J. Heschel, Dio nella ricerca
dell'uomo, Turin 1969, pp. 273-274).
To free the spirit again for the sense of wonder, contemporary man
must be shaken out of the state of self-sufficiency, superficiality and
torpor into which he let himself be swept during the period of
secularization. A great many obtuse and sluggish consciences can be
disturbed and awakened by appealing to the sense of dissatisfaction and
disappointment that many people feel in the presence of the injustice,
disorder, obsession and violence that are spreading in our society.
Starting from these experiences, the question can be raised of the
ultimate meaning of human life and of the ultimate meaning of the world
and of history; it is at this point, perhaps, that the horizon of
Transcendence may open up again.
Another way, recommended by many scholars, to break down religious
indifference is that of the reproposal and rehabilitation of some
fundamental values which the secularized culture of our time has set
aside, or even stifled and eliminated; values such as love, sacrifice,
generosity, justice, freedom, brotherhood, etc.; values which Jesus
Christ realized better than any other character in history, and which
the Church has the task of keeping alive throughout the centuries. Man
obsessed with money, entertainment, pleasure, comfort,
"having", must be brought to realize that these are not
values; they are not ultimate purposes, but instruments, means,
intermediate purposes.
Task of Church
If religious indifference is successfully broken down by means of the
reawakening of the sense of wonder and by means of a renewed
appreciation of fundamental values, the Christian can then go further
and urge the person who was indifferent to give new attention to
Christ's message. But for the presentation of this message to be
effective, it must be expressed in a new language, a living language, a
language that reflects the cultural form of our society. The language
that the Church continues to use, has become incomprehensible, at least
for many environments: it is a language of other times and other
cultures. This renewal of religious language is recommended also by Evangelii
Nuntiandi (n. 63): "The individual churches... have the task of
assimilating the essence of the Gospel message and of transposing it,
without the slightest betrayal of its essential truth, into the language
that these particular people understand, then of proclaiming it in this
language".
Power of example
There is, however, mother way, which is not added to the others in a
subsequent phase; it must be present from the beginning and alone can
amply replace most of them. It is the way of witness. The latter can
shake religious indifference and arouse new interest in the things of
God. Jesus himself shook the environment that surrounded him, an
environment which was often cold and mistrustful; and he won over his
disciples more with his works than with his words. The Saints too (St
Francis, St Philip Neri, St John Bosco, etc.) vanquished religious
indifference by becoming living and fascinating expressions of divine
reality.
The most effective medicine against indifference is certainly this:
holiness.
|
