Reading the work of Charles Taylor The secular era I return to the reflection on the exclusive humanism that dispenses with God in which we are immersed, and on our position as Christians in this society.
The topic seems relevant to me. A few years ago I heard from a politician that the place of religion in this society disenchanted in which science had brought a rational explanation to the world was to offer an ultimate meaning to our doing and being in society. This politician said that religion made sense because no other way had yet been found to fill that meaning of life.
I must admit that I found this 'still' partly worrying and partly a bit arrogant. Not because I really believe that the spiritual dimension can be filled with substitutes and that the religious is going to be removed from its last remaining redoubt of usefulness. But because around this pretension I sense that a proposal is being built that wants to occupy that redoubt of the soul.
The Canadian philosopher argues that this exclusive humanism without God 'will have to produce some substitute for the agapemust have a human welfare.
I have the feeling that this is what is at stake at the moment in the secularization of our world. Agenda 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals, the environmental movement are presented as a common goal that transcends us. It has something of that human beneficence that Taylor said. Humanity's aspirations are marked by an international agenda perfectly programmed by people who have designed the sustainable paradise in which we will live happily. The desire for revolutionary struggle has been channeled from the highest levels. History has a meaning that we are discovering step by step, in consecutive stages, which go from the twenty-thirty at twenty-fifty.
Think about it. Feminism, animalism, gender egalitarianism are not just political options. They have become for the people who defend them the meaning of their lives. They take the place of religion. That for which to live, that which transcends one. That for which to fight. Without those struggles your life would cease to have meaning. No, they are not simple political choices. They have an air of messianism that ends up promising a happy world, or even, as in the case of transhumanism, eternal life.
In this vision of life, the religious is reduced to an auxiliary element, which can even be useful, to achieve that higher end to which we all have to cooperate. The religious is minimized, subordinated and placed at the service of the system.
The process of secularization thus faces a new stage in which the religious fact is no longer necessary because humanitarianism has managed to find a meaning for the life of individuals and society within its own logic. We are at the point that Robert Hugh Benson masterfully described in 1907 in his novel Lord of the world.
We are really facing a move with the pretension of checkmate to religion.
Keep an eye out for our next move.
Teaching Delegate in the Diocese of Getafe since the 2010-2011 academic year, he has previously exercised this service in the Archbishopric of Pamplona and Tudela, for seven years (2003-2009). He currently combines this work with his dedication to youth ministry directing the Public Association of the Faithful 'Milicia de Santa Maria' and the educational association 'VEN Y VERÁS. EDUCATION', of which he is President.
