Is culture dynamic? Does its dynamism have a destiny or telos? Is there a vitalizing force that supports and promotes it? Can culture devolve from a state of vigorous flourishment to one of listless function and eventually to one of inevitable floundering?
These questions are not ones most of us ask. We are beneficiaries of the millennia old Judeo-Christian culture and, admittingly or otherwise, already know or intuit the answers. If we do purposefully reflect on the nature of culture (an exercise lamentably uncommon) we realize that intrinsic to it is the concept of ‘cult’ which is religious devotion. Our culture is the fruit of the inculturation of the Good News of the Gospel into the Greco-Roman civilization as it has evolved and expanded through the centuries to the present. The vivifying force of our culture – with its morality, its jurisprudence, its aspirations etc. – has fundamentally been ‘fear of the Lord’. Here, of course, fear connotes reverence for the sacred and its concomitant, generally shared sense of truth, of right and wrong.
But, what happens when this vivifying force is ignored? How do non-believers handle the great ‘Why?” of life? How do they explain their own existence? What, if anything, guides them, reassures them, bestows and confirms their sense of purpose? As a corollary, how would it be if the majority of us were non-believers? Would we even have a culture? On what common ground of shared beliefs and purpose could we meet and function together? If we share no truth, would we lose ‘our way’?
The explanation Jesus offers for his parable of the sower is illustrative here: “The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Mt.13) Do we fit in the latter category? Or, has secularism so desiccated the soil of our culture that our prospects are barren?
The trajectory of such a culture in decline is the descent from hope to indifference and eventually to despair.
Here another New Testament reference is instructive. In his first letter to the Corinthians St. Paul writes: “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you come to believe – as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who make things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor. For we are co-workers in God’s service…” (1 Cor 13)
Catholic philanthropy – because it is inspired by reverence for the life-giving power of the Divine – is a form of cultivation. In partnership with the Divine Gardener, it is an irrigation of grace which rejuvenates the dynamism of culture, a sine qua non for the advance of the Kingdom.