Like tiny patches of blue peeping through stormy skies, references to cultural renaissance are appearing, albeit infrequently, in today’s troubled atmosphere. Just as we are certain there is light above the clouds, do we dare believe these encouraging references to a cultural reawakening are harbingers of a more fulfilling future? What does cultural renaissance imply anyway? Are the any ‘green shoots’ indicating that one is underway?
The term seems to have different connotations. For those eager to escape any links with the past and its perceived limitations on personal freedom mention of a cultural renaissance is an alarming threat. For others it is an irresistible invitation to return to ‘the good old days’ when law and order were recognized as regnant, and the world at least seemed unchanging and more settled.
Given the sense of hopelessness that pervades much of our world, one might wonder if a cultural renaissance – regardless of its meaning – is even possible. Haven’t the scourges of nihilism and secularism so dulled our spirit that any such prospect is too daunting? Isn’t our collective spirit so crippled that we are easily swayed by a creeping godlessness which convinces us there is no way or no truth other than the groundless ones we create for ourselves? Haven’t we been seduced by the belief we can choose our own path, our own future independent of guidelines of the past or, indeed, irrespective of any reality outside of ourselves?
The good news is that a cultural renaissance is neither a free-fall into a future unbound by the lessons of our past nor a retreat to its protective limitations. It is neither reckless revolution nor mindless evolution. Rather, it is an intellectual awakening aroused by our maturing understanding of the reality of truth. Because it is intellectual, it relates to all other aspects of our humanity: artistic, moral, political, scientific, sociological, etc. It will not put us back to the ‘way things were’ or forward to the way we think things should be. Rather, it will reposition us on the track where we stive to discern the ‘way things ought to be’.
For this reason, education is critical. While it involves learning the way things are so that we can make our way in the world, education also involves exploration of how things should be. (This concept ought not to surprise us. For two millennia we have implored God that ‘thy will be done’, that his intended path for us come to fruition). This commitment to the exploration of truth is the key to the cultural renaissance.
There are ‘green shoots’, some of which have been featured in this column. One which recently has come to our attention is the St. Kateri Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. As its website states, it was founded “to provide opportunities for people living and studying in northwestern Massachusetts to engage with the Catholic intellectual tradition. Through lecture series, book discussion groups, seminars, and pilgrimages, the St. Kateri Institute aims to help people experience the beauty and truth of the Catholic faith in conversation with modern secular culture”.
Iter impiorum peribit – the last line of St. Jerome’s translation of the first psalm in Scripture – councils us that the path of the impious perishes. Endeavors such as the St. Kateri Institute presage a cultural renaissance and sustain our hope that the Kingdom is, indeed, advancing on its intended path.