It has been more than a year since the coronavirus lockdowns began. Recently someone asked me, “What was the most important thing you learned during the pandemic?” My response: “Before 2020, I acknowledged that we live in a secular society. But that was a notional affirmation, not a real one. Now I’ve experienced our secularism in its nakedness.”
Secular comes from the Latin saeculum. In its earliest use, the term referred to the period of time allotted to peoples and cities, their full measure of years. Christianity took up the word to denote the time between Christ’s ascension into heaven and his return in glory. During the saeculum, the affairs of men would continue in accord with worldly logic, even though Christ’s death and resurrection have laid the foundations for a very different, God-oriented future. To speak of our age as secular—the secular saeculum—is to indicate that we do not think Christ has reversed the course of human affairs and will inaugurate a new beginning. Put simply, secularism holds that life as we currently live it is all we have.
St. Paul describes the logic of the world as that of “sin and death.” Men grasp for wealth, strive for honor, and lust for dominion. This is our Promethean vanity at work, the vain dream that we can find fulfillment and happiness in what the world offers. St. Augustine notes that in these efforts we seem to strive for achievements, but curve in upon ourselves, for it’s all about my wealth, my honor, and my power. But there is another side to worldliness. We fear poverty, shrink from suffering, and cower before death’s claim to have the final say. In these ways too we curve in upon ourselves, although motivated by self-protective anxiety rather than prideful ambition.
As a teacher in the 1990s, I noticed that my students were more fearful than ambitious, more anxious than prideful. This disposition became more pronounced in the 2000s as the dominant impulse became self-protection. Don’t say something wrong. Don’t mess up your resume. Don’t take unnecessary risks. Keep your options open. Accumulate majors, degrees, and credentials in order to insulate yourself against the uncertainties of the job market. Tread carefully in romance and marriage—high stakes!
Pride often arises from misguided ambition, a rebellion against the mediocrity of life in the belief that we can bootstrap our way to glory. A man who builds monuments to himself, whether in the form of a company, best-selling book, or honorable legacy, is in a certain way seeking immortality. To strive on behalf of oneself is nonetheless to strive. In that respect, the prideful side of life in the saeculum between Christ’s ascension and return is not entirely secular.
By contrast, the anxious, self-protective crouch motivated by fear of poverty, suffering, and death is secular through and through. For it aspires to nothing, seeking only the negative good of not enduring want, privation, and the cruel cessation of existence. Such a view is “cynical” in the common use of that term, for it presumes that there is nothing to life other than the base realities of our material lives.
In 2020 we witnessed a society-wide embrace of extraordinary measures to preserve health. I don’t wish to debate their efficacy or wisdom. It’s sufficient to note the enthusiasm with which many sectors of society took up these measures—and what they were willing to give up.
People locked themselves into their homes and apartments, accepting an almost complete cessation of social life—aside from that which could be mediated through computer screens. City cores emptied out, and millions lost their jobs. Grandparents refused to see their grandchildren (or, more often, parents refused to put their own parents “at risk” by allowing them to see their grandchildren). Hospital administrators prevented family members from visiting dying relatives. Churches closed their doors.
We suspended our civil liberties. In New York, I’m still living under a state of emergency, and the governor rules my comings and goings by decree. At the height of the lockdowns last spring, the ordinary means of divine worship were inaccessible and the corporal works of mercy forbidden. (You cannot feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner if you’re obliged to shelter in place.) One of the important spiritual works of mercy, education, was suspended or hobbled.
Again, I do not wish to dispute these actions. Perhaps all were necessary. But in 2020 I came to see that there is an open question in our society: Is there anything we’re not willing to sacrifice for the sake of not dying?
The title of Archbishop Charles Chaput’s new book, Things Worth Dying For, indicates a clear answer. I agree. Man is a religious animal, and as a consequence no age is purely secular. We are always leaning toward the transcendent. We cherish some things more than worldly goods, more than even life itself, even if only inchoately. A mother’s willingness to sacrifice all for her child is a sign of how deeply this impulse runs. But in the emergency situation of 2020, I saw secularism reigning very nearly supreme. For a long period of time (it still lingers) I lived in a society that reorganized a great deal of life around the world’s claim that death is the greatest evil.
The upshot for me was education by experience. I “saw” secularism, I didn’t merely think about it. I “felt” what it means to live in a society that treats this life as the highest good, and therefore our true and final hope. It was not a good feeling.
R. R. Reno is editor of First Things.
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