CNA\/EWTN News<\/a>).- Catholics in America today need to find ways to engage the culture with truth, and avoid \u201cbeige Catholicism\u201d that seeks to be dominated by the culture, Bishop Robert Barron said Thursday.<\/p>\n\u201cBeige Catholicism,\u201d the bishop said, is the \u201cdominance of the prevailing culture over Catholicism,\u201d where Catholics are \u201ctoo culturally accommodating\u201d and \u201cexcessively apologetic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bishop Barron is an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.<\/p>\n
He delivered the keynote address at a conference on \u201cCatholic Thought and Human Flourishing,\u201d hosted by the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. on June 23. The conference was part of a series of events studying the influences of religion on the \u201croots of human flourishing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The purpose of his address, Bishop Barron said, was to propose a \u201cnew model for Church-culture dialogue\u201d different from the \u201cone-way quality of the conversation\u201d prevalent today. Under this model of \u201cbeige Catholicism,\u201d he noted, \u201cthe world sets the agenda for the Church.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the proper response to this is not a Church \u201cdoomed to a sectarian retreat\u201d from the world, the bishop insisted.<\/p>\n
Instead, he suggested, \u201cthe question is not whether the Church ought to engage in a dialogue with the wider culture, but rather, how?\u201d And for this, the Church can look to the centuries of saints who successfully dialogued with the culture of their day while still proclaiming Jesus Christ, he said, giving examples like St. Paul and St. Augustine.<\/p>\n
The saints did not fall into the modern trap of letting particular worldly experiences \u201cmeasure doctrine,\u201d he said. Rather, they had a Christo-centric dialogue where, as St. Paul wrote in his epistle to the Colossians, \u201cin Him [Jesus] all things were created, things visible and invisible\u201d and \u201cHe is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furthermore, the Church must identify what is bad with the culture and, like St. Augustine did with \u201cthe corrupt society of ancient Rome,\u201d respond with \u201chonest and unambiguous opposition,\u201d Bishop Barron said.<\/p>\n
St. Augustine \u201cnamed the sins of the Roman social order and proposed an alternative, what he called the \u2018civitas dei,\u2019 an order predicated upon the worship of the true God,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
However, he added, the assimilating Church should also be \u201ceager to take in and take up what it can from the culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSt. Paul told us that in Christ\u2019s light, we should test every spirit, rejecting what is bad, retaining what is good,\u201d the bishop explained. And the Church in assimilating \u201cdoesn\u2019t simply absorb\u201d the \u201cpositive features of society,\u201d but \u201crather, it elevates them and perfects them, in accord with the great Catholic principles.\u201d<\/p>\n
How then can the Church dialogue with American culture, Bishop Barron asked, assimilating what is good and rejecting what is bad?<\/p>\n
It must identify the problems with the mainstream culture \u2013 an excessive individualism, a flawed notion of freedom, and the \u201cprivatization of religion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The individualism affects America so that the \u201ccommon good remains unexplored and unarticulated,\u201d and thus \u201cwe do tend to lose our corporate social identity and a shared sense of moral direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is also a flawed understanding of freedom today \u201cas spontaneous personal choice and self-determination,\u201d he said. This differs from the traditional understanding of \u201cfreedom for excellence,\u201d which is the \u201cdisciplining of desire\u201d so that doing good becomes \u201cpossible, and then effortless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also, today\u2019s culture suffers from the \u201cprivatization of religion,\u201d he added, noting that \u201cauthentic Christianity can never be privatized\u201d and that all areas of life belong to God. The Church \u201ccertainly doesn\u2019t absent itself\u201d from the public square, he insisted.<\/p>\n
What can the Church find good in American culture? Pope St. John Paul II set an example of this when he praised the Western human rights tradition, Bishop Barron said.<\/p>\n
The Pope did not endorse the modern belief of human rights as grounded in \u201cdesire,\u201d he explained. Rather, he grounded human rights in \u201cevery individual\u201d being \u201ca subject of inviolable dignity and worth, and from this identity flow rights and a claim to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
In taking the existing human rights tradition and elevating it, Pope John Paul II was \u201ctransforming water into wine\u201d in \u201cassimilating a key feature of secular culture into the organic life of the Church,\u201d Bishop Barron said.<\/p>\n
Another positive element of American society is its \u201climited government carefully structured\u201d with \u201cchecks and balances,\u201d he said, which opposes the anti-biblical \u201ctheory of perfectibility\u201d that man can be perfected in society. The biblical belief that law and justice come from God fueled both the emancipation movement and the civil rights movement, he said.<\/p>\n
Figures like President Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also spoke out against injustices of their time using biblical language and quoting figures like St. Thomas Aquinas.<\/p>\n
In doing so, Bishop Barron said, they were not trying \u201cto impose a sectarian vision on the nation. Rather, \u201ceach creatively and non-aggressively introduced his most deeply-felt religious convictions into the public forum.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the same sense, he said, the Church is entering the public forum in a \u201cmissionary\u201d spirit to dialogue with it, \u201cto make the world more like the Church.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Washington D.C., Jun 26, 2016 \/ 05:19 am (CNA\/EWTN News).- Catholics in America today need to find ways to engage the culture with truth, and avoid “beige Catholicism” that seeks to be dominated by the culture, Bishop Robert Barron said Thu…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1031,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us"],"yoast_head":"\n
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