The Afternoon of Christianity: The Courage to Change
I thank Professor Howard for his attention to my book. I am seriously considering his objections. My book was written during a time of a COVID-19 pandemic and other global threats and a great division in the world, and the Catholic Church. Many of those threats seem even more serious now, three years later. I wrote this book at a time when Vladimir Putin was assuring the world that he would never violate Ukraine’s territorial integrity, as he solemnly pledged when Ukraine got rid of its nuclear weapons. Today, it is clear that if the West stops supporting Ukraine in its just defense against Russian genocide, Putin—the Hitler of our time—will invade more and more countries, and no one will be able to prevent Russian expansionism. I cannot deny the Czechoslovak experience of the Munich Treaty of 1938: it is wrong to give in to dictators and to believe their promises.
Yes, even the Catholic Church is divided. In my book I try to show that the main division is not between “progressives” and “conservatives” but between those for whom Catholicism is a superficial political ideology (whether left or right) and a tool of the culture wars (I call this attitude “Catholicism without Christianity”) and those who are trying to draw ever more deeply from the heart of Christian spirituality. I see the same error in “progressives” who see the salvation of the Church in changing its institutional structures and in “conservatives” who see salvation in their untouchability. Both sides overestimate the outer structures and overlook the inner, the essential—the living, risen Christ, living in the faith, love, and hope of the people—both within the Church and beyond its visible boundaries. Only a “change of heart,” a transformation of mentality (metanoia) is a prerequisite for a fruitful renewal of the Church. I am grateful to Pope Francis for placing this inner transformation at the heart of his vision for the synodal renewal of the Church.
I see on the one side those who reduce Christianity to a fight to criminalize abortion, on the other those who see their task as cultivating people’s consciences, promoting their responsibility to make the right choice in a free society. I am an opponent of abortion, but I have experienced what strict anti-abortion laws in neighboring Poland have done—not a decline in abortion, but a growth in “abortion tourism” to neighboring countries.
I wrote my book after the American presidential election (2020), when the whole world saw that the defeated Donald Trump, an immature, narcissistic personality with obvious pathological traits, was not capable of critical self-reflection, recognition of reality, and respect for democratic rules and the culture of law. In January of the following year, the whole world saw Trump provoking and encouraging the fascists’ attack on the symbol of American democracy. This year, I can find no excuse for the spiritual, moral, and intellectual blindness of Christians who would have a man who is the pure incarnation of the opposite of the values of the Gospel lead the Western world in such a dangerous international situation. I am immensely grateful to Pope Francis for giving a clear answer to a clear question: that, unlike many American Catholics, the Pope does not consider Donald Trump a better candidate than Kamala Harris, and that every Catholic is free in this election to decide according to his conscience.
I am writing my books in a situation in which a number of people in many countries are leaving the Catholic Church and also the other great traditional churches. This is happening not only in Western Europe, but also in post-communist countries (the fastest process of secularization in Europe is now taking place in Poland, the homeland of John Paul II), in the United States, in Latin America (e.g., Brazil, where Catholics are converting to Pentecostal churches) and, according to Pew surveys, in many Asian countries. The idea that African Christianity will reverse this global trend and bring about a turn to a more traditionalist religion is, I fear, an illusion. African theologians warn: we have many baptisms but few true Christians, and we lack deeper catechesis and education in the faith. I believe that the young churches of the post-colonial countries after the “childhood disease of conservatism” will find their own way, different from both Western conservatism and modernism.
Indeed, I believe that the main cause of the weakening of the churches is not the “evil outside world” but the inability of the church to respond to changes in the cultural climate in a timely manner. If the social encyclicals of Leo XIII had come earlier than half a century after the Communist Manifesto, the bloody power of the “specter of communism” might not have taken so long. Also, the Second Vatican Council’s offer of dialogue with modern culture came only at a time when the modern age was already ending and therefore did not meet with expected reciprocity on the part of “modern man.”
I consider efforts to “modernize the Church” to be anachronistic. Today the Church must find its place and mission in a postmodern world of radical plurality. The “signs of the times” have changed since the Second Vatican Council. Today, the Church’s greatest competitor is not secular humanism, but a spirituality that has transcended the space that the modern Church provided for spiritual development. Contemporary Christianity must deepen the spiritual and existential dimension of faith.
The empty and closed churches in the time of COVID-19 seemed to me a warning sign: unless the Church undergoes a radical reform, offering theological and spiritual deepening, the number of closed churches, seminaries, and monasteries will increase.
I see the most important sign of the times and God’s urgent message for this time in Pope Francis’s call for a synodal reform of Christianity. This call means much more than changing the Church from a rigid clerical institution into a flexible network of mutual communication. It is a call for an even deeper conception of the catholicity and ecumenicity of Christianity than the ecumenical openness of the Church at the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis places great emphasis not only on the search for a common path for Christians with people of different cultures and religions towards a “universal fraternity” (see the encyclical Fratelli tutti), but also towards a sensitivity to the whole richness of life on our planet (see Laudato si).
The Synod in the autumn of 2024 will probably not bring radical changes in the Church’s structures, but it may be the real beginning of a new epoch of Christianity, an “afternoon of Christianity,” a new way of being Church in the coming changes of the civilizational paradigm.
The message heard by the women at the empty tomb is also addressed to us: Why seek the Living among the dead? Go to Galilee, there you will see him! I am convinced that we are to stop weeping at the empty tomb and not to look for Jesus in the dead past. I believe that the growing continent of “seekers” beyond the churches is the Galilee of today where we are to look for the risen and transfigured Christ. The synodal renewal of the Church includes the courage to embark with them on a “common journey” (syn hodos).
