Christianity and Culture*

Nicholas Lobhotvicz

Christianity has influenced Western culture more than any factor save human
nature itself, and yet its influence is now greatly diminished. Reactions to this
have usually taken the form of a Hegelian affirmation that Christianity, having
served its historical purpose, is no longer important in itself; a nostalgic conserva-
tism which rejects the culture of modernity simply; or a revivalism which ignores
it. An alternative view rests on an analysis of culture and the enlightenment
process of secularization to which the Church reacted by closing in on itself until
the Second Vatican Council affirmed the legitimate autonomy of the secular. The
Church itself, partly to blame for secularization through its practical demystifica-
tion of nature and attempt to coercively supplant all pre- and non-Christian
religious experience, should engage modernity while giving witness to human
dignity and promoting a more human culture. Such a constructive recovery of
Christian culture must avoid both politicization and moralism.

Whenever we reflect on our faith or ask ourselves what it means

to be a Christian, we usually think about such matters as dogmas,
sacraments, or moral attitudes but rarely about culture. When on
the other hand we think about culture in the manner of a cultural
anthropologist, Christianity does not come to mind. Rather we are
inclined to think of our churches as works of art, or of the Masses
composed by Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, or of Dante's Divine
Comedy with its journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven, or
of European painting and sculpture whose main themes, over the
centuries, were drawn from biblical events. In brief, the two topics
of culture and Christianity do not seem to have much in common.
Moreover, it is difficult to see what the responsibility of the intellec-
tual should have to do with either of these two subjects. In fact, we
might ask whether intellectuals have any special responsibility at
all in this realm.
We Europeans and Americans participate in a culture that has
been shaped by Christianity more deeply than by anything else.
You may object that I have forgotten our Greek and Latin heritage,
the Jews with their Old Testament, or even the Arabs who in the
Middle Ages passed on to us the works of the Greeks, most of
which were believed to have been lost since about the time of St.

* Professor Lobkowicz delivered this paper as the Inaugural Paul and Barbara
Henkels Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities at the University of Notre
Dame on 15 October 1990.

373
374 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Augustine or the existence of which was completely unknown to

European scholars.
However, all this pre-Christian heritage —and in the case of the
Moslems this extra-Christian heritage —we received through the
labors of Christianity. If you ask yourself why the Western world
studies Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, whereas Egyptian is studied
by merely a few specialists, the answer is clear: Egyptian ideas,
institutions, and customs did not make extensive inroads into
Christian thought, except perhaps indirectly through the Pythagor-
eans, and then much later through the Coptic church, which how-
ever remained virtually isolated due to its Monophysitic dogma
that Christ had but one composite nature of both the human and
the divine.
The enormous impact of Christianity on our culture is best
illustrated by examining the realm of research and development
that has most visibly shaped our age, namely, technology and the
scientific discoveries that have made it possible. Although science
was created by the Greeks, modern technology has its ultimate
roots less in Greek rationalism than in the Judeo-Christian faith
in a God who is the creator of everything. For the Greeks, there
was a god or a demon behind each shrub and in each brook, grove,
and patch of fog on the mountainside. These mysterious beings
had to be placated constantly to keep them from doing harm. Only
a culture with faith in one transcendent God had the capacity to
demystify nature. Only this culture —that is, one that subjugated
nature to serve man's interests — made it possible for Cistercian
monks to develop an attitude which in the twelfth century permitted
them to harness rivers as an energy source for complicated mill
systems and later for Francis Bacon to arrive at the assertion that
"knowledge is power." To consider knowledge to be power presup-
poses a perspective in which the object of knowledge appears as
purely instrumental, a perspective unknown to other cultures. Al-
though the Greeks and the Chinese used their scientific knowledge,
they did so mainly for the construction of amusing gadgets; it is
not by chance that the technology we are familiar with today
emerged only in a Judeo-Christian culture, and that it emerged in
connection with, and later on the basis of, a science in which
explanation and prediction are largely symmetrical and which
therefore permits the manipulation of nature in a calculated way
and with cool deliberation. Neither technology as we know it nor
the science which it presupposes would exist had there not been a
 CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE 375

culture the religious conviction of which dedeified and desacralized

nature in the way Christianity has done so. Surely this desacraliza-
tion of nature is a properly Jewish rather than a Christian heritage;
already in the account of the creation at the beginning of the book
of Genesis the sun and the moon are described as sorts of lamps
suspended from the firmament, whereas all other religions at that
time venerated them as divinities. However, Judaism was the reli-
gion of a nation with little interest in proselytizing. Christianity
transformed the Jewish heritage into a transnational faith which
then laid the foundation of occidental culture.
Many other examples could be employed to show that our ways
of thinking, our figures of speech, our basic moral convictions, our
attitudes toward life and death, our concepts of human rights and
duties, our idea of the proper relation between the sexes, and
our notions of responsibility, guilt, justice, and equality would be
completely different if Christianity had not emerged and shaped
our culture. Today this is not as easy to recognize as, say, a hundred
years ago. Our culture today, owing to its scientific and technolog-
ical, as well as its legal and political achievements, is on the way
to becoming the dominant culture in the world. This culture, how-
ever, is dangerously fragmented, in part because technology and
political technology have been drained of spirituality. There are
fewer and fewer places around the world which have not at least
in part been shaped by our European heritage. Yet if one visits a
region that has been little influenced by the Occident —for ex-
ample, Katmandu in Nepal —one quickly realizes how incredibly
homogeneous our world has become and how deeply it has been
shaped and indeed permeated by fundamentals of Christian
thought.
A number of years ago when I delivered a lecture to Confucian
scholars in Korea, I tried to explain that Marxism is a possible
outgrowth of modern European thought. In the ensuing discus-
sion, one of these quiet, meditative scholars asked whether it would
not be equally true to say that Marxism is one of the possible
outgrowths of Christianity. Of course, he was perfectly right. Not
only is the eschatology of Marxism a secularized version of the
description of the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation, but
no other culture has gone as far as our own in rejecting each and
every form of transcendence, the consequence mainly of modern
atheism. Atheism presupposes a culture that believes or at least did
believe in one transcendent God.
376 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

To summarize, our Western culture has been so shaped by

Christianity that one could argue that only human nature has
shaped it in an even more fundamental way. Today, however,
Christianity hardly makes an impact on our culture. Although
Christianity has provided the foundation of our cultural heritage,
it no longer plays a vital role in the continued growth of our culture.
Let me be clear about this. When I say that our culture has been
shaped mainly by Christianity but today it no longer plays a vital
role in our cultural development, I do not wish to suggest that
the great majority of our forefathers were particularly faithful or
particularly "good" Christians. It is naive to assume, for example,
that the men and women of the Middle Ages were more devout
than we are today. In fact, we know that in the past even the
Church itself often embraced the message of Christ and the heritage
of Christianity to a lesser extent than it does today; to arrive at this
insight one only has to study history objectively. Nor do I wish to
suggest that the majority of Christians today are less devout than
those of the past. This illusory impression stems from an intellectual
shortsightedness which focuses attention mainly on sexual and
marital behavior. One cannot even claim that centuries ago Chris-
tians were more chaste; rather they were more discreet about their
illicit activities than we are today, they were more willing to admit
that it was improper to behave the way they did, and they did not
find the Romantic notion of love as integral to the institution of
marriage as we do today. In any case, to employ the yardstick of
sexual or marital behavior for measuring the state of Christianity
is to succumb to the misconception that Puritan mores define the
essence of Christianity.
In short, I am not particularly concerned about the saintliness
or sinfulness of persons, whether considered individually or collec-
tively; sinners have always been numerous and saints few. My
focus is on the cultural impact which Christianity made on the
societies of their time. This cultural impact was enormous in the
past, a heritage we all thrive on to this day, yet this impact seems
negligible today. There were, of course, obvious reasons for this
development: the Catholic church in a pluralistic democracy is less
likely to shape the culture of a nation than in a monarchy headed
by a Catholic sovereign. For example, the Counter-Reformation
in Southern Germany and Austria in the seventeenth century was
successful mainly because the local rulers called in Jesuits from
Spain to crack down on dissent; the Jesuits often complied by
 CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE 377

behaving like fanatics rather than like genuine Christians. This is

not to deny that through the spiritual exercises they introduced,
as well as through their qualitative improvement of schools and
universities, the Jesuits nevertheless made a unique contribution
to the Christian heritage of Central Europe. Here I am not inter-
ested in a historical explanation per se of Christianity's loss of
impact on modern culture, though I am not denying the impor-
tance of historical explanation for the understanding of events.
Rather I am interested in assessing the loss itself and in considering
what Christians should do about this.
There are several quite distinct proposals for dealing with this
loss of cultural impact, three of which I would briefly like now to
discuss. The first proposal, which these days is quite popular in
America and Europe, is best characterized in a brief description
found in the last few pages of the Philosophy of Right by the German
philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, first published in
1821. On the one hand, it amounts to admitting, indeed empha-
sizing, that everything that is valuable in our culture has its direct
or indirect roots in Christianity but, on the other hand, to claiming
that Christianity has become unnecessary and possibly even dan-
gerous if it assumes forms of expression beyond mere private con-
viction. From the point of view of a nonbeliever or of a very unor-
thodox Christian, as in the case of Hegel, this is actually a very
clever attitude. For it views Christianity, in spite of its undeniable
merits, as a heritage that has seen its day. This view that Chris-
tianity has lost its capacity for cultural renewal seems to be con-
firmed by the kitsch that declares itself to be religious art, the lack of
intellectual excellence of some undoubtedly pious but nevertheless
primitive ecclesiastical publications, and the paucity of really excel-
lent theologians such as Cardinal Ratzinger or Hans Urs von Bal-
thasar.
The second proposal finds expression in two trends within the
Church, namely the conservatives and the revivalists. Conserva-
tives wish to preserve the Christian heritage simply because it is
a heritage. They argue that this heritage has always been the way
it is and that there is no good reason for changing it. With regard
to Christianity's loss of impact on modern culture, the conservative
stance boils down to a position of lamenting immobility, com-
plaining about the fact that our culture is becoming less and less
Christian but at the same time not daring honestly to analyze why
this is so or to determine what consequences this will have for
378 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Christians. Conservatives simply believe that everything will turn

out for the best if they defend —or, if necessary, enforce —the old
order.
By contrast, revivalists see the solution exclusively in terms of
obtaining the personal commitment of as many Christians as pos-
sible. More generally, both the conservatives and the revivalists
suffer from being far removed from the joys, sufferings, concerns,
and prospects of our present age; they simply reject or even ignore
them. Thus, for example, conservatives are likely to view modern
art as an aberration; revivalists, on the other hand, usually do
not even bother to study modern exegesis or the intricacies of
Christianity's history, knowledge of which usually contributes to
our understanding of what is taking place today. I myself am
thought of as a conservative, and in some respects I am, and I have
a deep admiration for the very personal commitment to Christ of
all sincere revivalists. Nevertheless, conservatives and revivalists
manifest little understanding for the loss of Christian impact on
modern culture nor do they propose any viable approach for ad-
dressing this problem.
I would now like to offer my own views on this problem. But
first, let me say a few words about culture in general. Although
none of us would be the people we are if we had not participated
in our culture, it is by no means easy to define or even briefly to
describe what culture is. A highly abstract definition might run as
follows: culture consists of all the products of the mind and spirit
which go beyond products of man's natural instincts; and these
products are not perceived as a mere sum of individual contribu-
tions but rather as parts of an integrated system of tightly knit
relationships. Examples of cultural accomplishments include con-
ceptual frameworks like those of English grammar or of Euclidean
geometry, a mundane TV commercial for Listerine, Michelan-
gelo's Pietd, the implementation of a monetary system for con-
ducting trade, a university system, the custom of lifting one's head
to greet someone (which is not a universal trait), a cordon bleu
served with a Beaujolais or with a Coke, Aristotle's Metaphysics, or
the expression "crossbill" for a certain kind of bird. This list sounds
preposterously motley until we begin to see such items as interre-
lated elements of national or regional cultures. In a legend, for
example, our Christian heritage tells us that the crossbill acquired
its awkward beak by trying to remove the nails on the Cross in an
attempt to liberate Christ. As a consequence we literally perceive
 CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE 379

the crossbill in a different light than, let's say, an Iranian who is

also familiar with this bird. This is an illustration of how culture
influences perception.
However, one has to be careful not to exaggerate the contrast
between nature and culture. Hegel's claim that man is that which
he understands himself to be is such an exaggeration; this amounts
to saying that continuity in history throughout the ages can be
found only in the historical development of culture and not in the
biological or metaphysical nature of man. Hegel's claim is nonsense
since there are not only biological but also philosophical connec-
tions permitting us to recognize that we are basically the same kind
of beings as, for example, the people about whom Homer wrote.
Still it is true that culture may and often does penetrate deeply into
nature, so much so that we sometimes consider something to be
natural that in fact is cultural.
One of the theoretical issues heatedly debated between conserva-
tives and progressives concerns the question of the point at which
nature ends and culture begins, a problem discussed more carefully
in behavioral sciences than in politics. In the case of determining
the reasons for our taboo of incest, for example, the French struc-
turalist Levi-Strauss has claimed that this taboo is the decisive
stepping-stone from biology to culture, whereas the German eth-
nologist Bischof has been able to demonstrate that a similar taboo
exists among grey geese, a behavior pattern that is very likely
conditioned by hormones. Yet as greatly as culture may influence
nature, most phenomena of culture have a natural basis; the only
genuine exception might be our mental and spiritual life, and even
this, so one could argue, corresponds to comparable experiences
of animals. It is important, however, to see that the way in which
modern science views physical reality is, so to speak, an abstraction
of the way in which we perceive reality in a particular culture like
our own; science itself is a cultural phenomenon which, on the one
hand, has changed our perception of reality and, on the other hand,
presupposes a definite cultural perception to be at all possible. One
might be tempted to relate culture to nature in a way analogous
to Aristotle's distinction between form and matter: nature provides
the physical material or substratum (like Aristotle's "prime matter")
which is to be shaped by the sculptor or culture. Yet this analogy
is faulty in the following respect: in order to recognize culture, the
observer must in some way understand it. Years ago Peter Winch
wrote a most intelligent book on this issue, although he did not
380 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

explicitly deal with culture but rather with human behavior. At

the same time, however, culture is something objective, largely
independent of the perceiver, though taken for granted if one is
only exposed to his own culture.
One of the most important features of history is that it is a
product of culture. In fact, one can argue that history is first made
possible by the cultural tool of language, which makes it possible
for us to relate past events to future generations. Nature knows
change, a "before" and "after," but this alone does not constitute
history, though we do project what we know as history into the
development of nature. To be historical presupposes a reflection
upon the meaning of events; this process of reflection constantly
alters the cultural meaning and in turn what is produced by each
generation. A work of art, for example, has two histories, as it
were: first, its creation by the artist beginning with his or her initial
idea and ending with the completed work; but then the work itself
undergoes a series of interpretations, each interpretation being to
some extent dependent upon earlier ones and viewed in connection
with the interpretation of other works of art and the self-interpreta-
tion of the age. This inspires new works of art which in turn change
the way in which each generation understands itself. Parallels can
be drawn to the history of concepts, customs, or political systems.
Historians do not merely narrate facts; they select those facts
known to them which seem relevant to the topic they are ad-
dressing, with each generation practically rewriting history. This
reinterpretation and rewriting of history is a double-edged sword
bringing new insights, no doubt, but also obscuring old ones: im-
portant insights are forgotten, experiences are increasingly miscon-
strued, valuable cultural phenomena may even cease to exist. One
of the great misconceptions of the Enlightenment, the first epoch
to begin to understand culture as we do today, was the belief that
cultural development is always progressive. After the Holocaust
and the Gulag we are the first generation fully to realize how wrong
is this belief.
The Holocaust, the Gulag, and similar dramatic human and
consequently cultural catastrophes have made us aware of our
responsibility for culture. In fact, culture is not recognized as cul-
ture until we realize that it is a product of people; it is otherwise
experienced as if it were the expression of a cosmic or divine law
or the unchanging heritage of a past so far removed that no one
remembers its beginning. In our culture this insight into the human
 CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE 381

origin of culture dates back to the beginning of the modern age.

The reason why it has taken centuries until we have finally become
aware of our being responsible for culture is that indeed it is not
easy to say what this responsibility amounts to. For one thing, in
spite of rather absurd efforts by Communist regimes, there has
never been a central agency from which culture could be orches-
trated; in fact, in our society there are millions of different attitudes,
opinions, and voices that influence our culture, which for the most
part we produce without consciously intending to do so. As with
human actions in general, our actions begin a chain of effects which
become lost in a complexity of interrelated actions and efforts. As
if living in a twilight, we quickly lose sight of the effects of our
actions. Even if we wish to act according to moral principles, we
have to be courageous in our endeavors, realizing that things fre-
quently work out differently than we had intended; this is the
reason why ethics can ignore neither the intention nor, as Kant
did, the likely outcome of our actions.
Now where does all this leave Christians? Before speaking about
this I would like to make a remark about the concept of "seculariza-
tion." For one could indeed trivialize the whole point I have been
trying to make about the loss of Christian impact on modern culture
by simply attributing this loss to the well-known process of secular-
ization. Although the term secularization originally referred to the
state's expropriation of Church property — this occurred after the
French Revolution and after the abdication of the last Holy Roman
Emperor in 1806 — it later came to refer to a constantly accelerating
process in which the Church, then Christianity, and finally religion
in general were losing their hold on occidental culture.
Until about half a century ago faithful Christians regarded secu-
larization with horror. Wherever its power or influence was endan-
gered, the Church tenaciously defended its traditional rights and
privileges; and the faithful were expected to support their ecclesi-
astic leaders —to rally around the altar, so to speak —and to fight
alongside them. One of the consequences of this was that Chris-
tians, and in particular Catholics, instead of going into the world
to serve Christ, devoted all their efforts to building an alternative
Catholic world parallel to the secular one. As I am president of a
Catholic university, you will not, I hope, consider it scandalous if
I assert that it is to this development of attempting to create an
alternative world to the secular that Catholic universities owe their
inception. There emerged not only Catholic universities but also
382 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

Catholic schools, Catholic hospitals, Catholic trade unions, Cath-

olic associations, and even Catholic athletic clubs. In one sense,
this building of a Catholic alternative world was the most natural
thing to do; after all, the children and students had to be educated,
the future pastorate trained. But one of its consequences was that
Catholics catered to their own congregations, forming something
like a Catholic ghetto instead of turning their attention to the out-
side world and thereby transforming their culture. In the end,
such a ghetto mentality saw only two ways of dealing with the
secularization process: to strive for political power, or more and
more to uncouple itself from what went on in the rest of the world.
Some American Catholic publications of the early forties expressed
the wishful hope that since Catholics were bearing more children
at that time they would one day become the majority of the popula-
tion, take upon themselves the responsibilities of government and
establish a Catholic America.
This ghetto-like mentality is also exemplified by the fact that
until the end of the pontificate of Pope Pius XII some of the greatest
and undeniably devout theologians of our century such as de
Lubac, Balthasar, or even Guardini were treated by the Church
authorities almost as if they were heretics because they seriously
addressed the question of the Church's relationship to the secular
world. These theologians, who paradoxically enough were often
considered reactionaries, had two traits in common: on the one
hand, they were exceptionally well-educated; on the other hand,
although undeniably orthodox, they took the concerns of modern
society seriously. Recognizing the isolation into which the Church
had maneuvered itself, they sought ways for the Church to fulfill
its mission in the midst of a secular world without becoming ad-
dicted to the latter. It was certainly no coincidence that these inter-
nationally renowned theologians discussed issues of culture. The
Church no longer seemed to be able to appreciate or even to under-
stand contemporary culture.
All this changed at the Second Vatican Council. I do not want
to discuss here the rather obvious fact that one of the unintended
consequences of this great ecclesiastical event was that in a con-
fusing way a lot of the less pleasant waters of the secular world
lapped over into the Church; hence the almost desperate remark
of Pope Paul VI that the smoke of hell was pervading the Church
has an obvious ring of truth. But then, perhaps with the exception
of the Council of Trent there was always a mess for a few years
 CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE 383

after an ecumenical council. In this context, it is worth rereading

some of the observations of St. Basil the Great, who witnessed
Church developments after the Council of Nicea and who, inciden-
tally, was one of the first Church Fathers to invite the young to
read the pagan authors and, as a bee with flowers, select what is
good in them. Other Church Fathers later spoke of an exspoliatio
Aegyptiorum, a "ransacking of the Egyptians," in reference to the
way in which, after defeating the Egyptians, the Jews ransacked
their tents bringing the booty into the temple in the belief that the
spoils of war belonged to Yahweh. It was such a "ransacking of the
Egyptians" which originally motivated theologians such as Bal-
thasar or de Lubac and later the Council Fathers: everything that
is valuable belongs to Christ, even if this has first been discovered
by enemies of the Church and used against the Church in the past.
To return to the problem of secularization: perhaps the most
important insight of the Second Vatican Council was the recogni-
tion of the autonomy of secular realities and, as a consequence, the
idea that the Church as a whole, and each Christian individually,
not only has to share in the sorrows or joys of his neighbors but
also has to feel responsible for their behavior and the ensuing
consequences of this behavior, whether these neighbors are Chris-
tians or not, simply because as human beings they reflect the incar-
nation of the divine word; in other words, Christians should see
the face of Christ in every person.
Once assuming this point of view, it was quite natural to see the
process of secularization in a new light. The Church recognized
that it had lost its hold over culture, on the one hand, surrendering
a power which in the spirit of the Gospel it was not supposed to cling
to and, on the other hand, bestowing on the secular a legitimate
autonomy. This is reflected in the Church's new attitude toward
democracy, though it actually dates back to the Christmas radio
address of Pope Pius XII fifteen years before the Council began.
For centuries the Church had embraced an idea first developed by
Plato that the political community ought to reflect the structure of
the cosmos; as the cosmos is governed by the one God, it felt
that a monarchy, with some participation granted to the common
people, was the best form of government. Probably under the
influence of Jacques Maritain, Pope Pius XII then realized that
the political realm ought to be autonomous, free of religious edicts
as to what form governments should assume: the question was no
longer which form of government corresponded best to theological
384 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

ideas, but which best served man as he comprehended his role in

the world. The Council extended this insight to all realms that were
not strictly ecclesiastical, like science, art, economics, education,
and so on. This, of course, did not mean that the Church as the
administrator of the deposit of faith no longer had anything to
say about such matters, but rather that it would restrict itself to
upholding some basic principles.
This conception of the role of the Church denies any form of
Christian state, any subjection of art to Christian morals without
considerable reflection, or any professional competition in running
the economic affairs of a nation. However, the denial of religious
authority in these secular spheres of life should not be interpreted
as Christianity having abandoned its cultural mission. On the con-
trary, the Church has discovered its true mission, and I should add
that it is painfully learning to understand it more clearly day by
day.
This brings me back to my original subject, namely, how the
loss of Christian influence on the cultures of our world is to be
assessed and consequently what course of action should be taken.
Let me first return to the idea of Hegel's Philosophy of Right that
Christianity is indeed an important heritage but one that cannot
and even should not contribute to the further development of
modern culture. This view is correct in one respect: the ideas of
Christianity have become institutions. This is most obvious in
politics and law in which human rights, equality, social security,
care for the impoverished, and so on, are all ideas of Judeo-
Christian origin which today in our situation no longer need to be
justified by arguments that are specifically Judeo-Christian. At the
same time, however, this view misses a crucial point, namely, that
evident propositions which we hold to be truths, other than those
of logic and mathematics, have cultural presuppositions. That two
times two is four we can explain to everyone, though perhaps with
some effort; we cannot in the same fashion prove, for example, that
the dignity of man is sacred, that men and women are equal, or that
minorities should not be persecuted. In this respect, the Catholic
doctrine of natural law suffered from a certain naivete): just be-
cause a certain valued concept is rooted in the nature of man
does not mean that everyone of sound mind has to recognize this.
Despite the fact that much of our culture has Christian roots with
a long historical development, these roots — and this is the point —
can easily wither away. What Hegel's view overlooks is that a
 CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE 385

heritage cannot survive for long if it is not nourished by its roots

to some extent.
In short, whoever claims that the fruits of our Christian heritage
ought to be cherished without caring for its Christian renewal
ignores the consequences made palpably obvious by the Holocaust
and the Gulag: our cultural ideas, values, and institutions will
wither away if not supported by the Christian convictions on which
they are based. In fact, even the atheist must beg us Christians to
help him strengthen the moral standards which he too expects of
society and its members, including himself. The Communist rulers
of Eastern Europe had begun to notice this a few years before their
regimes collapsed: they needed the Church not only to maintain
a semblance of peace with the growing majority of dissenters in
their countries but even to get people simply to work. However,
they overlooked another important point: the less credible their
regimes became, the more even the adherents of these systems
found common interests with the Church and even marched with
it because it had become the last vestige of authority which could
credibly address questions of human values. In Poland, sadly
enough the clergy usually did not realize that the intellectuals who
had approached the Church did not intend to become Catholics
but rather to rediscover genuine human values. Consequently,
the intellectuals and artists, who had been permitted to transform
church buildings into lecture halls, theaters, exhibits, and so on,
a short time after 1980 recoiled. Although a few of them converted
and others went to confession for the first time in decades, the great
majority of them shrank back with indignation as soon as they
realized that the Church, instead of simply supporting their efforts,
was mainly interested in evangelizing.
Having explained all this, I find it comparatively easy to convey
how the ever-decreasing impact of Christianity upon our culture
ought to be assessed and consequently what our future task should
be as Christians. Although secularization can certainly be ex-
plained in many respects by the increasing number of people aban-
doning the Church or becoming indifferent to moral issues, it is
also, and possibly even to a greater extent, due to the fact that the
Church — and this certainly includes ourselves — for a long time did
not sufficiently acknowledge the legitimate right of the secular to
be autonomous and realized too late that the essence of the Church's
cultural impact lies neither in having an influential power base,
nor in trying to proselytizing, nor even in trying to persuade, but
386 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

rather in being ever-present, responding appropriately to given

needs without imposing itself on others.
In fact, though it may seem daring to spell it out, there are at
least two reasons to suspect that the Church itself provoked its own
alarming cultural defeat. The first reason is that it did not consider
carefully enough the example of its Lord. All too often, instead of
following the commandment of love it called for the enforcement
of law; instead of softly knocking at the door it took by storm;
instead of simply being present and prepared to serve others, it
demanded loudly that it be served; instead of suffering in humility,
it fought back in pride. The second reason is more intricate: there
is a sense in which the Church seems to have undermined the
foundation on which it was built. When St. Paul preached the
Gospel in Greece and Rome, he was speaking to heathens who had
never doubted the existence of a world beyond their own; rather
they received the message of the Gospel as "good news" because
this otherworld afterlife seemed anything but pleasant as it was
populated by strange and mischievous beings. By expelling such
creatures Christianity laid the groundwork for the sobriety of our
age, making possible science and technology as we know it today.
However, this sober rationality also exorcised out of our lives with
ever greater success the wondrous, the sublime, and the myste-
rious, that is, what in the twenties Rudolf Otto described as "the
Holy." As a consequence, today's Church finds itself reminding
and even informing its contemporaries that there is an afterlife,
and in a sense it is the Church's own doing that our everyday world
is void of anything that reminds us of such a reality.
In other words, Christianity has expelled all other religions,
somehow forgetting that although it is based on a self-revelation
of God himself, it too is a religion which appeals to realms of man
beyond pure rationality. The Church's shortcomings in this regard
are evidenced by young people's attraction to oriental religions and
the New Age movement.
But what then is the Christian's task today? It seems to me that
Pope John Paul II constantly exemplifies the only realistic answer
to this question through his statements and behavior. The Church's
most elementary task with regard to culture is to guarantee that
man's greatest concerns will be heard and answered and to vouch
for the dignity of man in the deepest and most universal sense of
his nature. The Second Vatican Council has offered its brotherly
assistance to all people of good will, including atheists, in the
 CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE 387

building of a new and more humane world; and as, for example,
the peace meeting at Assisi a few years ago showed — an event that
unfortunately was scandalous for even some committed Chris-
tians—the Church is willing to go as far as the Lord himself in
seeking out sinners, apostates, nonbelievers, and atheists. It is even
ready to abandon insistence on its conviction that it is the only true
religion and the only legitimate Church if it can thereby be of
greater service to mankind. In a word, to create a Christian impact
upon our culture today simply means to do almost everything
that helps man to be more human, all the while knowing that
the Catholic faith has much more to say about this subject than
non-Christians care to hear.
In a way, Christians as well as non-Christians have responded
to this message of the Second Vatican Council with great joy.
Without wanting to belabor the point that many Christians have
misunderstood the Council's intentions, believing that henceforth
the Church will conform to all the whims of the world, I do wish
however, to point out two tendencies that I consider dangerously
one-sided. The first is the belief that the most important, if not the
only real contribution of Christians to today's culture is to struggle
for justice, peace, equality, emancipation, and so on, in short, for
political and social concerns, especially if they entail a true service
to the poor and oppressed. It would be dangerous not to recognize
that there are other cultural concerns that are equally important:
encouraging art that enhances man's dignity, providing the sci-
ences and humanities with purpose and direction beyond a narrow
quest for knowledge and truth, ensuring that technology serves
man, providing everyone with oases of tranquility for contempla-
tion, and assisting everyone in their search for meaning in life.
Perhaps our most important contribution to contemporary culture
is not to permit what the Italian theologian Don Luigi Guissani
has called "the religious sense" to disappear, that is, we should
remind society in numerous ways that without God the ultimate
meaning of human existence will remain unfathomable, that the
ultimate needs of man cannot be satisfied, and that there is more
to this world than meets the eye.
To consider justice the only truly legitimate cultural concern
usually is a biased notion of progressives. However, conservatives
usually also have the biased tendency to reduce all important issues
to moral ones. Again, moral concerns are important, and it is
no coincidence that Gaudium et spes mentions consciousness, not
388 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS

reason, as the characteristic of man most distinctively human.

However, to reduce everything to moral issues tends to produce
a special kind of intolerance that easily leads us to overlook the fact
that the Mysterious is not a moral item. Sometimes it seems to me
that even Church authorities occasionally overlook the fact that the
Church is the administrator of the Mystery of the universe and not
the steward of morality.
Let me conclude with the following remark. Almost everything
that has gone wrong in the recent history of our culture originated
in the minds of people such as ourselves, people who are university
graduates and intellectuals. All too frequently noble ideas have
been twisted by frenzied fanatics into ruthless and oppressive ideol-
ogies. We have to take it upon ourselves to ensure that this does not
happen. This responsibility does not consist in becoming frenzied
ourselves; as the first president of my native country of Czechoslo-
vakia, Masaryk, once dryly remarked, "To get all worked up in
itself does not constitute a program." Sometimes it may be neces-
sary to demonstrate, although clearly this form of expression makes
little impact on culture. Rather, I challenge you to do one of the
hardest things in life: struggle in thought, break the bonds of leth-
argy to grapple with the problems of our world, and bring your
ideas to fruition, expressing the results of your labor of love in a
voice so soft that in order to hear it the listeners have to give you
their full attention. We Christian university members must strive
for our maximum personal potential in competence, at the same
time bearing in mind that competition, fruitful though it may be
for inducing us to do our best, is not the ultimate meaning of
intellectual life. I challenge you to reflect on the deeper meaning
of what we are doing as academic teachers and students in order
to keep our culture from foundering and falling into barbarisms
such as we have experienced in this century. To re-evangelize our
culture and to present the message of the Gospel to society means,
or in any case presupposes, that we support everything in our
culture that complies with the true nature of man, with his fears
and hopes, with his need to seek truth and meaning and to be
honest with himself. It is not enough simply to claim that since we
teach and study and aspire to find truth we are the bearers of truth,
for what we hold to be true almost always amounts to only a piece
in the puzzle.
As a university president I am often confronted with the rather
 CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE 389

unpleasant task of having to speak about "the idea of the univer-

sity." It is unpleasant because it is almost impossible to say more
than bare trivialities which, in order to make them sound inter-
esting, one has to play up. Yet, there is one point which I think
is neither trivial nor capable of being overemphasized, namely, the
fact that the university also engenders a specific culture, a culture
that is important for our society's culture at large, and that this
university culture is characterized by a special virtue. In German
it is called "Nachdenklichkeit," which might be translated into En-
glish as "reflection," which for me expresses the virtue of keeping
one's own understanding of truth in mind while at the same time
listening to others with the conviction that they may well have
ascertained some aspects of truth that have escaped our attention.
Perhaps our most important responsibility as both Christians and
intellectuals is to cultivate this virtue by constantly asking ourselves
what ultimately is man's destination, not only with regard to the
hereafter but also with regard to the here and now.