No one should trivialize the current economic crisis, which poses a real threat to the well-being of people around the world. But “crisis” quickly moves from being an unpleasant fact that we must face to a poisonous climate of anxiety that we breathe. In order to maintain perspective, I’ve shut myself off from the unremitting commentary, speculation and polemic generated (especially in the blogosphere) and turned to the writings of Benedict XVI.
As far as I know, Benedict has not said much about our present troubles, but in The Yes Of Jesus Christ he suggests that the periods of intense panic that occasionally wash over us are symptoms of the godless modern worldview.
The essence of modernity is that man now pledges to rely only on his own resources. He will accept and trust only what he can control. Since he cannot live without some form of hope, he needs some assurance that his future will be good. Without a gracious, provident God to rely on, this assurance must take the form of fideistic belief in progress. Modern man must think that, in his own efforts to control his future, he is only cooperating with the god called History, whose divine plan is sure to culminate in utopia. Within this new religion, the theological virtue of “hope” consists in an ideological optimism to be maintained in defiance of any contrary evidence.
Of course trust in the immanent mechanisms of history is irrational. At moments of crisis like this, when it seems our god has failed, we sharply and suddenly lose our modern “hope.” Benedict writes:
Optimism is only the facade of a world without hope that is trying to hide from its own despair with this deceptive sham. This is the only explanation for the immoderate and irrational anxiety, this traumatic and violent fear that breaks out when some setback or accident in technological or economic development casts doubt on the dogma of progress.
Doubt is very much in the air. If, heaven forbid, things get much worse, we will see whether it is in God or in Western prosperity that we have really placed our trust.
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