Religion without Renunciation; or, Why observe Lent?

We are not a nation of atheists, says Ross Douthat . We are religious, but we prefer a religion (and a God) who is OK with “human appetites and all the varied ways they intertwine. From the sermons of Joel Osteen to the epiphanies of Eat, Pray, Love , our spiritual oracles still urge us to seek the supernatural, the numinous, the divine. They just dismiss the idea that the divine could possibly want anything for us except for what we already want for ourselves.

“Religion without renunciation has obvious appeal. But its cultural consequences are not all self-evidently positive. Absent ideals of chastity, people are less likely to form families. Absent ideals of solidarity, more people live and age and die alone. The social landscape that we take for granted is one that many earlier generations would have regarded as dystopian: sex and reproduction have both been ruthlessly commodified, adult freedoms are enjoyed at the expense of children’s interests, fewer children grow up with both a mother and a father, and fewer and fewer children are even born at all.”

Douthat focuses specifically on the challenges facing Pope Francis. What the Catholic church needs, he argues is ” a generation of priests and bishops who hold themselves to a higher standard — higher than their immediate predecessors, and higher than the world.”

It’s not just a message for Catholics.