The Coming Catholic Renaissance

John Paul II apparently predicted that the 21st century could see conversions to Catholicism “like a tidal wave.”

Given John Paul’s saintliness, he may have been speaking prophesy. He may have seen something.

I believe it is possible. First, I think it is the logical next step for us all. I have felt, ever since the late Sixties, that this was the direction in which the zeitgeist was inevitably moving. It seemed to me that the logical and necessary Sixties thing to do was to become either a Jesus Freak or a Hare Krishna. The spiritual world was obviously the “other side” we were trying to get to. Anything else was, as we used to say, a “cop out.”

Most of us copped out.

But even for us, the good part of the Sixties may be recovered. The same big demographic, we “Baby Boomers,” is now heading into our twilight years. It is time to wake up and start thinking about what comes next.

The Sixties were a “youth culture.” We will soon, for the same demographic reasons, have an “age culture.” And it is natural for the aged to ponder the afterlife.

This alone may well make the entire culture suddenly get religion.

At the same time, modernism has spectacularly dead-ended, intellectually, in “postmodernism”—the lack of all belief or principle. There is nowhere left to go on that path. Very little has really happened in the arts or in philosophy for several decades. What is obviously needed is a massive reinjection of the fundamental principles of our civilization. That would be the Catholic Church.

Meantime, the current general antipathy towards the Catholic Church for not “changing with the times” will have tested its bona fides, in the face of general error, and will identify it clearly as the bearer of truth when the time for truth comes. The stone that was rejected is become the cornerstone—that is the way history always works.

It seems to me that even the recent upsurge in militant atheism—Dawkins, Hitchens--is a good sign. Their charges are so wild they sound hysterical—or desperate. They may be secularism’s last gasp. Rather as Oliver Stone’s movie JFK managed inadvertently to discredit Kennedy conspiracy theories generally, these sorts of wild charges, once plainly stated and generally examined, will tend to discredit atheism.

And there is another factor, at least for the developed world—which is to say, mostly, the traditionally Christian world. The assumption has been that the recent decline in religious observance was permanent, based on a conventional wisdom that, with increasing wealth and well-being, people turn away from religion. Atheists would say this proves religion is a crutch. Christians would say it proves the Beatitudes: “blessed are the poor.”

But prior history suggests this is true only up to a point. Even in the past, some people were exceptionally wealthy. Were they also conspicuously irreligious?

No. What we find is that, when people are poor, they are pious. As their wealth grows, they tend to question their old beliefs—or perhaps, to forget about God and concentrate on their acquisition of worldly goods. The middle classes tend to be less conventionally religious, or at least less religious in the Catholic sense. But this is not the end of it—once they have acquired a lot of worldly goods, and risen to the upper class, they tend to become once again conspicuously religious. British monarchs, for example, kept inconveniently converting to Catholicism. Perhaps this is because, once one is familiar with wealth, one loses the illusion that it can solve all your problems.

For the past two centuries, since the Industrial Revolution, the story of the developed world has been of a growing middle class. Hence, the materialism of the middle class, often commented upon, has grown in influence.

Now, in the post-industrial era, we in the developed world are in effect starting to move broadly into the upper classes.

The spirituality characteristic of the upper classes is therefore likely to grow. Indeed, it was seen first in the Sixties, though in an immature, adolescent, abortive form. We wanted the world, and we wanted it then—which is to say, the whole world no longer satisfied.

Already in the US, religion is again becoming socially acceptable. Presidential candidates suddenly feel obliged to at least claim to be religious. This will probably spread to the rest of the developed world in time, as all US trends tend to do. And it should deepen in the US.

The confrontation with “militant Islam,” or rather, Islamism, ought also, logically, to help this process. It tends to remind those of us who are, at least ethnically, Europeans of our essentially Christian identity. It forces us to think again, and more clearly, of the proper sphere of religion in our culture and in our lives. And, I think, we are starting to realize, partly through the example of the Muslim world, how very intricately intertwined they really are.

And then there’s China. True, it is moving broadly into the middle class, and so presumably growing less religious. But there is another factor: religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, have been suppressed in China for some time. This always works, in the long term, for more conversions.

I expect the lid to come off China very soon—the present regime, with its hostility to religion, must sooner or later fall, and I expect this to be soon. When it does, many Chinese may embrace Christianity en masse, in reaction to atheism and as an obvious alternative value system. There are signs of this—and it has already happened in Korea, next door. The Catholic Church stands perhaps in good stead here as the most repressed of religions—along with Falun Gong, but Falun Gong is not really a religion in the same sense. As in the developed world, this establishes her bona fides.

The same will probably eventually happen in North Korea and in Vietnam. As China goes largely Christian, the growing Chinese prestige may prompt many more in other parts of the world to take a closer look.

I am also hopeful of a third tidal wave: the unification of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The experience of the “Uniate” churches proves that there is no theological bar to this. With growing globalization and growing contact between East and West, this essentially artificial and geographical division should end. Besides adding several hundred million souls to a greater Catholic Church at a stroke—about a 20% increase in size--closing this wound will also help evangelization. It might also inspire a wider ecumenism within Christianity. Its possible aftermath might draw in the Anglicans and Lutherans as well.

Welcome to the Age of Aquarius.