John L. Allen Jr.
Analysis
Pope Benedict XVI notoriously speaks in paragraphs, not sound-bites, but every now and then he’s capable of delivering a line for the ages. The best case in point is still his homily for the Mass just before the conclave that elected him to the papacy, when then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger defined the crisis of modernity as a “dictatorship of relativism.”
At least in terms of what he’s against – if not so much what he’s for – the struggle against the “dictatorship of relativism” captures the spirit of Benedict’s papacy every bit as much as the crusade against the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union expressed the heart of the Reagan presidency.
The latest proof came with news that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has instructed American Jesuit theologian Fr. Roger Haight to refrain from teaching and publishing while he works with the Jesuit order to clarify his views. Haight’s theories on Christ, the Holy Spirit and non-Christian religions raise a complex cluster of issues, but at bottom the perceived danger is clear: Religious relativism, the idea that while Christianity may be true for Christians, other religions are equally true for their adherents.
While there’s no indication that Benedict personally directed the action against Haight, it nonetheless reflects his concerns – especially given that the Vatican’s interest in Haight began when the pope was still the prefect of the doctrinal office.
In philosophical parlance, “relativism” refers to the notion that truth claims are not absolute, but rather relative to something – to a given historical period, or culture, or set of political and social objectives. It’s expressed in maxims such as Nietzsche’s “There are no facts, only interpretations,” and Derrida’s “There is nothing outside the text.” For Benedict and like-minded critics, relativism is the mother of all errors – corroding moral standards, fueling nihilism, and leaving the West vulnerable to the challenges posed by Islam and other cultural rivals.
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Earlier related stories:
Rome orders theologian Roger Haight to stop teaching, publishing
Core Catholic issues at stake in Haight fray
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In light of the recent developments with Haight, three points are probably worth making about the papal push on relativism:
• As a matter of academic theory, many philosophers believe the battle is already over, in the sense that the heyday
of “deconstructionism,” “post-modernism,” and so on has come and gone;
• Within the realm of Catholic theology, relativism is a terribly elusive target, mainly because no one admits to being a relativist;
• Vigilance about relativism is likely to be most acute in the area of inter-religious dialogue and theologies of religious pluralism.
Simon Blackburn, a Cambridge philosopher, author of 2005’s best-selling Truth: A Guide, and a self-professed atheist, is characteristic of those who say that relativism, at least as a theoretical matter, is largely yesterday’s news.
“Ten years ago, what goes loosely under the name of ‘post-modernism’ was much more an ‘item’ in the general cultural conversation,” Blackburn said in a recent NCR interview. “Its heyday was in the 80s and 90s.”
“People like Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida in France, some aspects of Heidegger, had led people in academic and semi-academic conversation to doubt authority and to doubt even their own judgment – to become, as it were, paralyzed because of familiar thoughts about plurality of opinions, the difficulty of proof, cultural relativism.”
That mood, Blackburn said, was in some ways “killed off” by 9-11.
“There comes a time to be serious,” he said. “The playful, ironic, ‘anything goes’ sort of attitude may have suited the 90s, but not anymore.”
Of course, it takes time for developments within academic philosophy to radiate out into other disciplines, to say nothing of popular culture. Benedict clearly believes that both within the church and the broader society, various forms of relativism retain a powerful appeal.
Even so, doing battle against the “dictatorship of relativism” in Catholic theology is a tricky business, in part because it’s almost impossible to find anyone explicitly carrying the relativist flag. It’s unlike liberation theology, or women’s ordination – matters where there are two clearly defined sides and agreed-upon terms of debate. Among theologians, “relativism” is more akin to “heresy,” in the sense that almost everyone agrees it’s bad, but there’s little consensus about what counts as a case in point.
Haight offers a classic example. In his controversial book Jesus: Symbol of God, Haight argued that while Christ is the preeminent “symbol” and “mediator” of God for Christians, that claim should not exclude the possibility that other “symbols” of God may be valid in other religious traditions. For critics, that amounts to a “one religion is as good as another” form of relativism; Haight and his supporters, however, insist it’s not relativism at all, but rather a deep truth about God’s activity outside the visible bounds of Christianity.
In a 2003 interview with NCR, Haight argued that his pluralist reading of non-Christian religions deserves to be recognized by the church as an “orthodox” view, even if it’s a “minority position.”
What all this suggests, perhaps, is that in theological debate, “relativism” functions less as an identifiable school of thought than as a pejorative term, a sort of slippery-slope warning about where certain theories might lead.
Whatever form it takes, concern about relativism cuts across every sub-discipline in theology today. It’s acute in moral theology, for example, forming a key concern in a recent Vatican-directed visitation of American seminaries. Arguably, however, the ferment reaches its peak in the Christian analysis of other religions, because it is here that three broad streams of thought intersect:
• Western empiricism, which tends to regard universal truth as possible only with regard to purely scientific statements, thus relegating religion to the realm of the subjective;
• Eastern spirituality, especially the agnosticism and resistance to strong positive statements about God in traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism;
• Multi-culturalism, which regards the values and beliefs of every culture as valid, and hence “true,” for its own members, but not necessarily for others.
It was the potential for these three forces to create a “perfect storm” which led Ratzinger, as early as a speech to the bishops of Asia in Hong Kong in 1993, to identify the theology of religious pluralism as the most dangerous movement in Catholic thought today – analogous, he said, to the challenges posed by liberation theology in the 1980s, not to mention the syncretistic philosophy of religion that dominated the late Roman Empire.
This explains why Haight, to paraphrase his own theology, has become a “symbol” and “mediation” of the struggle against the dictatorship of relativism – and why the theology of religions has become the most explosive topic in Catholic thought in the early 21st century.
