New Search -- New Name
NCRcafe
Spirituality and Culture
New Search --- New Name
A Post for NCRcafe: New Search For Ultimate Reality
By Marie Schickel Rottschaefer
Vol. 2 No. 1 June 2, 2008
The goal of these posts is to give a brief overview of developments that have relevance for us in the early 21st century, particularly in seeking solutions for pressing people and planet problems.
Greetings café confreres! It is good to return after about a six-month absence due to knee surgery. New Search For Ultimate Reality has a name change. It will be called Exit To Entrance. In these posts I will be attempting to strengthen my claim that in the twenty-first century we are moving from the end of the Axial Age faith to a post- axial age faith (for those who consider themselves as faith seekers). The term, “post-axial age,†is a provisional description. The journey itself will reveal the nature of this age, also characterizing in time, the name of this age.
I speak not as a scholar or researcher but as an ordinary laywoman (now retired) with an MS in education, specializing in nursing and health from a well recognized university. The discipline of nursing relies on an interdisciplinary approach to solve actual and potential health problems. So in these posts I use a variety of sources from researchers, scholars and other experts, employing an integrated approach to strengthen my claim and its rationale.
The following is a quote taken from Pope Benedict XVI’s recent speech to educators during his visit to the United States. It was put on the Internet by The College of St. Catherine.
“In regard to faculty members at Catholic colleges universities, I wish to reaffirm the great value of academic freedom. In virtue of this freedom you are called to search for the truth wherever careful analysis of evidence leads you. Yet it is also the case that any appeal to the principle of academic freedom in order to justify positions that contradict the faith and the teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university's identity and mission; a mission at the heart of the Church's munus docendi and not somehow autonomous or independent of it.†[Munus docendi means, roughly, teaching office].
From my view the above quote expresses the heart of the problem. With the greatest and most humble respect I say that the papal request itself appears to have an inadvertent inconsistency. For in fulfilling the Pope’s injunction to pursue the truth “wherever careful analysis of evidence leads you†we need to employ critical thinking skills, scientific knowledge, biblical/historical research and philosophical assessment, especially epistemological (theory of knowledge and justification) and logical examination. But these tools of academic freedom do seem to lead to positions that contradict the faith and the Church’s teachings. Thus the Pope’s words leave us with no resolution of the long-standing debate between academic freedom and the munus docendi.
The resolution must come in the pursuit of truth. It must take precedence over the teaching office of the Church. The ‘fierce urgency of now’ compels a further extension of the Church’s thinking. The intellectual tools that enable the pursuit of truth are necessary for both a productive Church-wide discussion -- a discussion that would involve the genuine learning presupposed in the idea of munus docendi -- and for commitments beyond the Church, commitments to the world at large. Even a review of the relevant Church documents shows that the Vatican itself has changed its thinking regarding its understanding of its teaching authority in contemporary times to keep in step with the intellectual revolutions that academic freedom in the pursuit of truth has achieved.
As the tension between the pursuit of truth and obeying the teaching authority of the Church relaxes, the discrepancy between the results of academic freedom and the teachings of the Church fades. The result is that we will exit one age and begin another. Exiting the Axial Age religion known as Christianity, specifically Catholicism, we enter a post-axial age faith. Because of the work of experts in well-developed and emerging fields of scholarly endeavor Homo sapiens has made a giant leap forward in the last 2000 years since the founding of Christianity. The sciences and other disciplines are converging to show that Christianity had a beginning that is now leading to its ending. Humanity’s faith in the future as elaborated in Christianity is once again metamorphosing into a new faith -- a post-axial age one. This process is part of our cultural evolution. Evolutionary theory has preempted the assumed dichotomy between the hypothetical sacred and secular realms. Sacred and secular reality and truth are one.
Next time we will be ready to highlight some defining moments of belief’s change through time.
In the quote you have
In the quote you have provided, it does seem that Benedict speaks of freedom in seeking the truth with a clear understanding, but ends up nullifying the very meaning of freedom in seeking the truth which he sets forth. What he says reminds me of when Jesus was talking to the Pharisees, and Jesus had apparently broken their law and tried to explain to them the truth, but their law would not allow them to see or believe the truth. There are numerous examples of this in the Gospels in which Jesus had to explain to them over and over again, the Truth, which contradicted their Law (teaching office) and did away with their Law.
I also believe that we are entering a new age, perhaps of new enlightenment, that is inclusive of the sacred realm with the secular. This is the world that Jesus lived within and where God is not divided or excluded from living.
I look forward to reading more of your thoughts.
Marie, just so my ignorance
Marie, just so my ignorance doesn't get in the way of meaningful discussion, I need to get a better fix on what "axial" amd "post-axial" mean here.
My sense of "axial" is of a centering object about which things turn, i.e., an axle or axis, whether a radius point or the axle of a vehicle around which its wheels turn. If we think of culture as the axis around which cultures turn, then we must address the cohesive center of culture, the gravity center holding culture together.
Off the top of my head, if I were to consider "axial" and "postaxial" from the perspective of Western culture, then, it seems to me, that what holds cultures together and around which they pivot, is "worldview". In that Roman Catholic religion has dominated Western culture, we need to consider and identify the dominant worldview of Western religious culture.
A time of great turning that departed from the accustomed Catholic axial viewpoint began in and through the Middle Ages (?), through the Renaissance and in conjunction with the Protestant revolt against the corruption of institutional Catholicism.
The Thirty Years Wars of Religion culminated in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), by which time humanism, rationality, and Enlightenment and Positivism (somewhat later) seriously challenged theological/political dominion and began looking to new learning for new centering (e.g., Giordano Bruno, Copernicus, Galileo, the Philosphes, Comte, etc) to replace the Aristotelian/Scholastical worldview.
It seems that there is not yet an acceptable new axis (worldview) around which people can find consensus, and by which global cultures can come to sustainable grounding and agreement.
It's suggested here that the "static worldview" (swv) is the broken axle that's been rejected because it doesn't make sense and it doesn't work any more, and that the evolutionary worldview (ewv) is the replacement axle that is surfacing as the understanding that best serves cultures and religions in their common pursuits of universal wellbeing.
Insofar as Roman Catholic (Western Christian) philosophical/theological discussions continue to be premised in swv thinking, they will find themselves suspect from the point of view of evolutionary consciousness. That's still a problem for the Roman Catholic hierarchy and its cohorts.
Am I off on a tangent, or am I advancing the subject matter here?
I dont think you are off
I dont think you are off tangent at all. When we look outside of the Church teachings and allow ourselves to explore the writings of contemporary spiritual authors such as Neale Donald Walsh, Deepok Chopra, Lee Carroll and others we do find a new worldview that all can embrace. Unfortunately, the Vatican leadership has declared these authors to be heretical as have other religious leaders.
The problem is relatively simple. The Vatican leadership, as well as leadership in other religions is made up of geriatric men. They have spent their entire lives living a paradigm. Now they are faced with the prospect that the paradigms they have worshiped and taught for so long are no longer valid. They are faced with an admission that for their entire lives, they were wrong. A common trait among men from that era is an inability to admit an error of that magnitude. To them, it is preferable to continue living in error, rather than to admit that they were perpetuating an error their entire lives.
When we consider their actions from this perspective, much of the discontinuity that we see makes sense. It is simply a desperate act by desperate old men to avoid admitting that they are wrong. What we are seeing now is no different to what occurred in previous centuries when Vatican leadership reacted adversly to the evidence that the world was round instead of flat or that creation was a bit longer than the 5000 or so years described in the book of Genesis.
Even though only a few years
Even though only a few years separate me in age from Pope Benedict, I agree with your comment.
Absolutely but not totally
Absolutely but not totally correct? Your articulation of the contradiction between Benedict's assertion of intellectual freedom, intellectual integrity or if you will academic freedom is in contradiction to the precondition that faith trumps even "careful analysis of evidence" is, I think accurate. We see that in the Regensberg speech as well, so it is not an isolated or situation specific strategy. However correct, there is more to the problem. A clear contradiction is resolvable among thinking people of good will by reflection on the evidence and the process which led to the contradiction. This situation however cannot be resolved because the contradiction is not clear to its proponents, or they are intellectiually blind to it and furthermore denies its existence, or denies its relevance. When the 'obvious', the self-evident is held without the ability or presumed right to question, or reconsider or remeasure there is no resolution. The issue is one of personal, and (to the extent that a community or institution can constitute a psyche) psychological. It is roughly equivalent to the fate of a tribal authority and that of its loyal adherents proclaiming that apposing one's thumb and forefinger is not possible: eventual extinction.
This, I think the term is, scotosis exhibits itself in any number of specific issues so seems to be a generalized condition of the institution personalized but not ristricted to Ratzinger/Benedict. It is reinforced by self-proclaimed and diety attributed 'fail-safes' and protective mechanisms that render ordinary methods of communication and organic self-correction impossible.
You say, “The sciences and
You say, “The sciences and other disciplines are converging to show that Christianity had a beginning that is now leading to its ending.“
Every age, every civilization has its worldview, its consciousness-complex that holds it together at the center. Many things about consciousness, in every age and every civilization, are the same because of the unity of origins and the continuity of evolution.
Christianity, based on the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, represents a quantum leap in civil consciousness by which civilizations and cultures are sustained and able to thrive. In that sense, I do not see that “science and other disciplines are converging to show that Christianity … is now heading to its ending�, notwithstanding the fact of Christianity’s misdirected culture into the politics of dominion.
What I do see, however, is another quantum leap in the offing, namely, an end to imperial politics and the theological culture of exploitive dominion. This will come about because of the global change of consensus consciousness now awakening to the irreversible disasters caused by social/ ecological waste and destruction as a result of exploitation fueled in consumerism.
What I see an end to is not Christianity but to the cultural paradigm of consumerist economics, imperial politics, dominion theology and Western capitalism, greed-based. If these do not come to an end, there is a great likelihood that human populations will suffer extreme die-off.
Every Age has its axle around which it turns; but axles wear out and need replacing. New Ages need new axles that fit, are in good repair and lubricated. If reason fails to “grease the axle�, the Age is handicapped and falls short of its potential.
The SWV (static worldview) is an unfit axle for Postmodernity; the EWV (evolutionary worldview) fits and works.