“The modern world suffers
from a disease of the imagination.” Dr. John Senior
In
all that the Church does, including evangelization, she seeks to engage the human
person. More accurately, our activities are generally directed to engaging a
specific aspect or quality of the human person.
Catechesis, for example, primarily seeks to nourish the intellect. Certain
types of music are meant to primarily engage the emotions.
In
recent times the Church has focused on three aspects of the human person; the
intellect, the will and the emotions. There has been a great emphasis on catechesis to
help form people intellectually, service projects and mission trips to strengthen
the will, and music and retreats that seek to stir the emotions. The engagement
of the intellect, the will and the emotions are a good and necessary part of
what the Church needs to do to fulfill her task.
Yet
in spite of all the great catechetical programs available, the numerous service
opportunities offered, and the wide selection of lively music available to us,
the rates of the practice of the faith continues to plummet at an alarming rate,
especially among teens and young adults.
We also
hear that the way out of our current crisis is to continue what we are doing
and just simply do more of it. The
answer to our problems will be found in more catechesis, more service
opportunities, more Praise and Worship music. The answer will be found in pouring more
resources and adding more people to the ranks of catechists, mission trip
leaders and song leaders at our Teen Masses.
More people and activities will result in more people more committed to
their Catholic faith. Yet, there is no
evidence that this is really helping.
Without
denying the place of orthodox catechesis, service opportunities and the value
of emotional experiences, I would contend that there is a better response to
our modern crisis of faith. While engaging
the intellect, will and emotions are important, there is another faculty of the
human person that is even more crucial in developing a deep and abiding faith –
the imagination.
The
imagination, which is a faculty of the human mind, is a great and powerful gift
that helps us in our relationship to God.
One of the contentions of this post, and possibly other ones if people
are interested, is that imagination is a key but also neglected faculty of the
human person that helps lead people to an experience of God.
This
idea is rooted in the thought of Blessed
John Henry Newman (1801-1890), one of the greatest thinkers in modern times.
Newman, himself a convert to Catholicism
from Anglicanism, lived at a time when science began to hold a monopoly on its claimed
ability to discern truth. While Newman
was not anti-scientific, he prophetically realized that as the scientific
method of discerning the truth was to grow in power, other ways of discovering
the truth, through literature or theology for example, would come to lose their
positions of authority. Over time,
Newman rightly predicted, if left unchallenged, the scientific method would
come to monopolize the discovery of truth, leaving everything else to be
considered only opinion or feeling.
As I said, Newman was not
anti-scientific. Like any good Catholic
thinker, he held to the proposition that truth cannot contradict truth. While
never denying the rightful place of science, or seeking to limit its freedom in
its own sphere, Newman sought to protect other ways of coming to know the truth;
including truth arrived at through the imagination. Newman
realized that if one way of coming to know the truth was over-emphasized, then
other ways of coming to knowledge of the truth would lose their authority. In an age where the scientific method
reigned, other ways of knowledge lost their power.
Today,
the power of the scientific truth rules supreme, especially over against matters
of faith. Questions of faith can only
remain at the personal level (and therefore should be left out of the
classroom) because, as it is mistakenly claimed, they can only be answered
through personal opinion or feelings. Profession
of faith in God, in Jesus as the Son of God, holds the same position in the
minds of many as someone who believes in a flying spaghetti monster.
For
those of us involved in ministry to higher education, this is our daily
reality. Newman is not only a patron of
campus ministry; he is also a prophet. What
Newman foresaw in the nineteenth century has now come to full fruition in the
twenty-first. The results have been devastating,
not just to the Catholic faith, but to the human person. We minister to people who, as a result of this
monopoly of scientific truth, are paralyzed by fear and anxiety, struggle to
truly know that God exists and lacks the joy that comes through a true
encounter with Him.
I am
becoming more and more convinced that the crisis of faith we are experiencing
today is not just a crisis of intellect, will or emotions. We cannot catechize, serve or emote our way
out. Following Newman, the way out of
our crisis requires us to engage the entire person, including the faculty of
the imagination.
