Bishop Conley: "Preach from the Rooftops" - rational conversation vs. evangelization

James Conley, bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, has published a very pithy, read-worthy piece at Public Discourse: Preach from the Rooftops: Evangelium vitae at Twenty - I'd recommend reading the whole thing. Conley's explicit theme is John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life); but substantive issues that we'd naturally think of as more properly belonging to Fides et ratio (Faith and Reason) are clearly just as relevant and crucial for the development of Conley's thesis. Taking up Conley's train of thought at about the two-thirds mark, Conley notes the generally decayed state of moral understanding and moral conviction of most Catholics, as well as of Americans in general (not to mention Canadians, etc.):

We have not successfully convinced most Catholics, or anyone else for that matter, that contraception has grave social consequences. Nor have we yet convinced enough Americans that abortion is a real social injustice. Until we do that, we can expect to see the contraceptive mentality continue to foster and encourage libertine social tyranny, religious persecution, and family disintegration.

This is a powerful statement: in the absence of widely shared moral conviction rooted in the truth - an absence exemplified, for Conley, by "the contraceptive mentality" - we are left with libertine social tyranny, religious persecution, and family disintegration. (Conley provides specific examples of such things further up in his piece.) And this is what we currently generally have: instead of widely shared moral conviction rooted in the truth we have relativism. So relativism is a problem; but what to do about it? Conley writes:

But relativism is not immediately overcome by rational conversation in the public square. Rational conversation is important. But among the effects of relativism is a popular culture increasingly less capable—and less willing—to engage in rational discourse at all.

While it leaves us with plenty of unpacking to do, this point is, in certain respects, well put: There is, obviously enough, a natural, inherent affinity between, first, adopting the proposition: "there is no truth of the matter on this subject, just various perspectives and opinions" (relativism); and then, as a result of adopting relativism, being less capable of - or at least less open to - considering non-relativistic propositions: "there is a truth of the matter on this subject (even if the truth is complicated and an understanding of it can only be achieved at the cost of considerable effort, and probably also some luck); and the truth of the matter is this: ..."

It seems obvious enough that the adoption of the relativistic claim will likely leave the resulting believer-in-relativism less capable of considering non-relativistic propositions in an open-minded and intelligent way. Without the prior adoption of the relativistic proposition, one would simply be confronted with a proposition of the latter form, a proposition of a kind which serves as an invitation, and a provocation, to actually think; to embark on the potentially difficult undertaking, with no guarantee of success, of trying to sort through the arguments and evidence for different views in order to discover which is fairest and truest. But with the prior adoption of the relativistic proposition, one confronts propositions of the latter form with a ready-made, catch-all defense, an ideological filter: "of course, that's your opinion, so it's 'true for you'; but we all have our own equally valid opinions and perspectives - and that's all there is: heaps and heaps of equally 'valid' opinions and perspectives." Which is to say: relativism is the opiate of the intellect, a powerful medicine for inducing intellectual apathy. And intellectual apathy, or laziness, leads to intellectual dishonesty, and eventually to a more or less generalized state of bad conscience.

In Conley's quite justified view, then, relativism is bad, something to be overcome. But how?

According to Conley, "Rational conversation is important. But..." That is, Conley admits that rational conversation is 'important'; but this 'importance' is qualified. How, exactly?

Clearly enough, I think, Conley has in view, at least principally, the instrumental importance of rational conversation. The importance of rational conversation, here, seems to lie principally in its instrumental role in convincing people of moral truths - such as the truth about the morality of contraception and abortion. If, however, cultural conditions are such that rational conversation can no longer effectively serve this, its instrumental purpose, then what becomes of the presumed importance of rational conversation? One could get the unfortunate impression in reading what Conley has to say here that rational conversation has no intrinsic importance; and that if cultural conditions are such that the instrumental value of rational conversation seems to have been effectively suppressed, then the importance and value of rational conversation itself will have been effectively nullified - at least relative to that particular social context...

Having thus - implicitly, and perhaps disastrously - argued for the effective nullification of the importance of rational conversation in our relativism-ridden culture, Conley proceeds to provide an (ostensible) alternative to it, namely, evangelization. This move, however, I would argue, is one that is dangerous, misleading, and even self-defeating.

Very briefly: It is dangerous because it would seem to feed the flames of irrationalism already blazing in our culture, and especially in the Church. To the contrary, we must be very clear: "rational conversation" is not of merely instrumental value, it is intrinsically valuable, and morally imperative. It is misleading, because evangelization, like worship (see Romans 12:1), should be a form of "rational conversation," certainly not opposed to it. And it is self-defeating, because it implies - just as does relativism! - that the value of "rational conversation" is merely relative. Ironically, the call to evangelization, when framed as an alternative to rational conversation, ends up having the same effect as relativism: it promotes a culture wherein people - especially people of faith - are "less capable - and less willing - to engage in rational discourse at all."

Let's examine what Conley has to say about the 'evangelization' option:

Evangelium Vitae made clear that the dignity of human life is best understood by disciples of Jesus Christ. The Holy Father’s proposal for eradicating the social evils of abortion and contraception—and their profound social consequences—is evangelization.

Okay; but is JPII's "evangelization" rightly understood as something that steps in to fill the breach when "rational conversation" has proven ineffective in a particular cultural situation?

Well, fundamentally Christians believe that "at the fullness of time God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those under the law" (Gal 4, 4-5). This is the Gospel, and this is very different from saying "at a random time and place God sent his son, born of a random woman into a randomly selected culture, in order to redeem some randomly selected group of people." (Think about it.) The point is, the Christian gospel is organically rooted in its Jewish, Judeo-Hellenic, Judeo-Roman roots. The Christian gospel in fact claims to transcend history, but only and precisely from within history, from out of the divinely chosen and prepared historical (cultural, religious, intellectual, etc.) setting of the incarnation and life of Christ, which thereby becomes a definitive reference point and centre for the whole history of man and human culture.

The other way of putting this is to say that grace builds on nature. Grace does not substitute for nature; nor does it make nature - history, culture, intellectual and political environment, etc. - irrelevant or worthless. Grace elevates nature. But natural wounds still need natural cures. Grace does not save us from the natural ill effects of an unhealthy diet, nor does it save us from having to put in the work to develop and use our natural intelligence in order to avoid and counter the intellectual errors to which we are susceptible in our particular (relativistic) culture. That is, evangelization cannot and must not replace rational conversation.

Conley continues:

The Gospel of Life is the Christian gospel. John Paul said that we only understand human dignity in this life if we understand the human potential for eternal life.

"...we only understand..."? Or we most fully understand? Again, don't we need some distinctions here, in regard to the complementarity of nature and grace, reason and faith, rational conversation and evangelization?... (In this context, how can we ignore the opening line of JP II's Fides et ratio: "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth..." - the point being, it's rather difficult to fly with only one wing!) In any case, for Conley's purposes here, "the human potential for eternal life" is certainly too vague of a phrase; it is not the kind of thing that we can or should forthwith associate specifically with evangelization (i.e., with the Christian gospel). After all, even many relativists will understand (in some sense or other) "the human potential for eternal life," so this kind of Gospel of Vague won't really get us anywhere in regard to the fundamental issues Conley is trying to take on.

Conley concludes:

I remember vividly John Paul II’s homily in Denver, at World Youth Day in 1993, less than two years before he wrote Evangelium Vitae. I was a young priest who had traveled there with pilgrims from Wichita, Kansas. John Paul outlined the culture of death’s grave social dangers. And he proposed this solution:

Do not be afraid to go out on the streets and into public places, like the first Apostles who preached Christ and the Good News of salvation in the squares of cities, towns and villages. This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is the time to preach it from the rooftops!

Evangelium Vitae proposed the urgency of transforming human hearts—and human culture—through the Gospel of Life. Cultural transformation will take time. It is likely that successive generations will be called upon to re-Christianize the western cultural tradition. But restoring Christian culture must begin by restoring hearts—through transformative, kerygmatic encounters with Jesus Christ. Recognizing that fact was the truest genius of Evangelium Vitae.

No doubt this is a stirring invocation. But taken as a proposal to turn away from rational discourse and towards evangelization, it is also undoubtedly profoundly impractical. If people don't want to hear the truth in the context of a rational conversation, why, pray tell, are they going to listen when some zealot climbs on the roof and starts preaching to them? Or again, speaking about "transformative, kerygmatic encounters with Jesus Christ" sounds profound and edifying. But what does such a phrase actually refer to, concretely - other than some form of "rational conversation"? Why would Conley want to imply that "evangelization" refers to something that is fundamentally not a form of "rational conversation"? Surely this kind of implicit separation of faith and reason - at least at the level of Conley's specific rhetoric, if not his general practice - in fact risks falsifying the gospel and ignoring and discounting that complementarity of faith and reason we find proclaimed and defended in JPII's Fides et ratio. Rhetoric which sets up a false dichotomy, where we seem to be encouraged to opt for faith instead of reason, looks more like a symptom of the dictatorship of relativism than a cure for it.