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Change and Return
This article was originally
published in Caelum
Et Terra, Summer 1991, volume 1, no
1, and is used here with the author�s permission.
To obtain permission to republish
this article, contact the author by clicking on the author's name link above.
����������� Sometime
in the 1960s the movement or way of life that became known as the
counterculture began.� Though certainly
related to the more political New Left, the counterculture nevertheless was
distinct in that it was more interested in cultural than political change.� Speaking in the most general way, one can
say that the burden of the counterculture's challenge to the establishment
culture was that the establishment culture in North America and most of the
Western world had misused social organization and technology to create a
civilization that was estranged from nature, both human nature and the natures
of the various created things we need to live our lives and which make up our
earth.� And even though the counterculture
seems to have given place to the New Age, a movement less admirable in every
way than its predecessor, still I think that a discussion of the connection
between the counterculture and Western culture, and particularly the
traditional religion of the West, Catholicism, could be useful.
����������� Now
adherents of the counterculture usually assumed that their ideals bore
absolutely no relationship with anything in Western civilization.� They tended to look to the civilizations of
India or to Native Americans for affinities to what they held.� And the defenders of contemporary Western
culture, the establishment culture, agreed with that assessment.� But one of the strangest things about any
consideration of this question is that both the defenders of the establishment
and the adherents of the counterculture were often mistaken about what each was
committed to.� Members of the
establishment often loudly proclaimed that they were preserving eternal
verities, whereas quite often the ideals they embraced were of relatively
recent origin.� Capitalism is one case
in point.� Far from being something
traditional in Western culture, it is something that was developed fairly
recently on the ruins of all that is really native to our civilization.
����������� On
the other hand, although members of the counterculture assumed that the ideals
they accepted are radically opposed to everything that Western culture has ever
stood for, in many cases, they have simply rediscovered Western traditions that
have been lost or obscured for the past hundred or even three hundred years.
����������� One
example of this is our attitude toward nature.�
Since the triumph of the philosophy of Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon,
which began about three hundred years ago, Western man has too often taken a
ruthless, mechanistic view of nature.�
The earth has been seen as something not only to be enjoyed by man, but
changed and twisted until it is no longer recognizable.� We have not tried to work with the
earth and all created natures, but merely to change what is inconvenient to
us.� Men imagine that any other attitude
is foreign to Western civilization.�
They do not realize that the philosopher Aristotle, who for centuries
dominated Western philosophy and education, took a very different view of our
relationship to nature; a view that in many ways approximates that of the
counterculture.
����������� Many
other examples could be cited.� But the
most interesting is the relationship of the counterculture to Catholicism, the
religion that has shaped so much that is typical of Western culture.� It is largely unknown that the Catholic
religion and the culture it fosters exhibit striking similarities to much that
characterized the counterculture.� For
example, in the Catholic literary and intellectual revival of the first half of
this century, a number of the most famous Catholic writers, such as Hilaire
Belloc, G. K. Chesterton and Christopher Dawson, explicitly opposed industrial
capitalism, and recommended a return to small, craft-oriented enterprises in
rural settings.� E. F. Schumacher, author
of Small is Beautiful, and a convert to the Catholic faith, advocated
many of these same Catholic proposals in his own excellent works on economics.
Another writer, Fr. Denis Fahey, was well aware years ago of the harm done to
our diets by highly processed foods.�
Many of these writers also warned of pollution and environmental damage
long before there was an organized environmental movement.� In fact, the reason there was no concerted
Catholic effort to influence society on these issues was because most Catholics
were not Catholic enough; they were ignorant of the rich tradition of Catholic
thought and the implications of their own Faith.
����������� On
another important issue, Catholic faith and tradition have always championed
the concept of the organic community, bound by family and similar ties, rather
than the atomistic, striving group of individuals that modern society has
created.� The teaching of the Catholic
Church is that there is a natural unity in society.� Each person and each group has a natural part to play, and
harmony will arise if each part fulfills its function.� The relationship between different groups or
classes must be based on a recognition that every person has needs because he
is human; and that the community must see to it that he is able to live in a
manner worthy of a human being. The Popes have specifically rejected the notion
that the so-called laws of eocnomics can ever override one's right to be able
to live in human dignity.� This teaching
of the Church has been updated and adapted to modern conditions beginning with
Pope Leo XIII in 1891, and continuing through the present Pontiff, John Paul
II.
����������� In
regard to specifics, the Popes and other Catholic writers have advocated such
things as employee-owned or managed industries, labor unions, cooperatives, the
family farm, and a living wage for all workers.� And in areas besides economics, Catholicism also has affinities
with the counterculture.� Most people
are aware that the Catholic Church promotes natural family planning and
condemns unnatural forms of birth control, a position also taken by some noted
countercultural writers.� But in
addition, Catholic writers have also promoted breast-feeding of babies; even
during the forties and fifties, when very few mothers nursed their babies,
manuals written for Catholic parents consistently recommended
breast-feeding.� La Leche League, the
well-known organization that supports breast-feeding and a general way of life
more in harmony with nature, was founded by a group of Catholic mothers and
named after a shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary in St. Augustine, Florida.
����������� Catholicism
has also always taken account of man's need for festivity and celebration.� The word "holiday" comes from
"holy day;" Catholic religious celebrations are both religious and
festive, as can especially be seen in places such as southern Europe or Latin
America where Catholic culture has traditionally flourished.� And though Catholics greatly respect Sunday,
the day of the Lord's Resurrection, as a weekly holy day, we have never taken
the Puritan view that it need be a dour and boring time.� Religious services, yes, but also festivity,
games, and plenty of human interaction.
����������� It
must be admitted that most Catholics are unaware of this heritage of ours and
fail to live it fully.� Even so, in the
families and lives of many ethnic Catholics in this country one can see an
emphasis on community through such means as large families, the extended
family, and a concomitant rejection of the atomistic striving that
unfortunately characterizes America and much of the modern world. Family and
community first is a quite different motto from self first.
����������� But
despite these scattered survivals from our rich Catholic past, there is a
trememdous work of education to be done within the Church.� Catholics must be taught not only the truths
of our Faith, but the necessary implications of these truths for our lives and
our culture.� No one should have an
illusion that this will be easy, but there is no other way in which we can
promote the full flowering of the Faith, a faith that was meant to transform
not only our personal conduct and our families but our nations and cultures and
the entire world.� This is simply the
social reign of Jesus Christ the King and it is our first task and duty after
the conversion of our own lives and the salvation of our own souls.
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