Modernity, Modernism, Postmodernity
The Parable of the Prodigal Son
Postmodernity is the spiritual situation of today [1] when we find ourselves amidst the disastrous consequences, nihilism, conflicts, disillusionment, disorientation, disgust, skepticism, debris, and rubble of the collapse of that modernity, which the Cartesians, to propagate Descartes' philosophy effectively, called "modern philosophy."
And indeed, their persuasion was so skillful that they convinced many, even the historians of philosophy and Cartesius' enemies, to believe that his was truly the "modern philosophy," the true philosophy.
They believed that Cartesius' formidable and revolutionary discovery was indeed that modernity had forever surpassed the preceding unhappy ages, including that of the Bible, when the truth was exchanged with legend and fable, miserable ages, devoid of the sunlight of reason, ages wandering in doubt, illusion, appearances, and insurmountable uncertainty of a diversity of opinions, among which it was impossible to establish which one was true because there was no certain and irrefutable criterion to know what the truth was: so, this definitive truth was the cogito invented by Descartes.
Based on the famous Cartesian cogito, the so-called "transcendental idealism" arose in Germany, founded by Kant and developed by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. It began to construct with immense confidence and certainty what was finally believed to be the true and indestructible edifice or system of absolute knowledge, a reissue of ancient gnosis and consecration of ancient Greek sophistry, replacing the previous crude and vulgar Thomistic realism of the Catholic Church, which was considered childish, pre-critical, naive, and ultimately illusory.
But what happened? By pushing Cartesian cogito to its extreme consequences, we arrived at Hegel's pantheism, Darwin's evolutionism, Marx's atheistic materialism, Comte's positivism, Nietzsche's Übermensch, Freud's pan-sexualism, Gentile's idealism, the official philosopher of fascism, and Heidegger's ontology, the official philosopher of Nazism, philosophies which, when put into practice by Nazi Germany, unleashed the Second World War against Christian humanism and European Christian civilization to destroy both the Church, the people of the New Covenant, and Israel, the people of the Old Covenant, to establish the kingdom, as Hegel calls it, of the Weltgeist, the "Spirit of the world," the same expression that Saint Paul uses to designate the kingdom of Satan.
Today, after the immense disasters of the last century, the myths of fascism and Nazism have collapsed. Still, not that of Marxist communism and the Masonic and esoteric Zionist ideal of gnosis (hence Kabbalah), with an Indian and Buddhist pantheism more seductive than ever, with inexorable Islamic fundamentalism, with a gasping Lutheranism, we realize that Cartesian-Hegelian modernity is over, it has failed, it has shattered into a thousand pieces, which are the false pluralism constituted by the chaotic plurality of current philosophical currents in circulation, where everything and its opposite are affirmed, where everyone is against everyone, tot capita quot sententiae.
Today, a new, more refined sophistry worse than the Greek one has been reborn because now even the truths of the Christian faith, which pagans did not know, are corrupted, and it is clear that corrupting faith is worse than corrupting reason.
With Descartes, we wanted to enjoy our goods torn from God and we distanced ourselves from Him, taking a path and embracing a life that led us to feed on the husks of pigs. But now we don't even have someone to give them to us.
Can we recognize what we have become by moving away from the Father's house? Does postmodernity truly want to abandon and overcome Cartesian modernity, or is it to put on a new garment under lying appearances?
However, not all of us understood the profound causes of the Second World War, and even though they wanted to avoid a third (and final) world war, perhaps without realizing it, they continued on the path traced by Descartes, of what they call "modernity" that has led us to catastrophe.
Not everyone knows or wants to recognize this failure of Cartesianism, and although they have realized that a certain modernity has ended, even though they want to overcome a failed modernity by using a healing postmodernity, they are not able to decisively reject the poisonous Cartesian germ that generated it but simply maintain it in a different form.
These backward innovators do not realize that this harmful postmodernity they have devised to repair the damage caused by modernity is - so to speak -, reheated broth, that is, they have not truly rejected the Cartesian proposal, they have not returned to the lost path, the right path of biblical and Thomistic realism and true progress initiated by the Second Vatican Council and recommended by Pope Francis himself, when he points to the example of St. Thomas as a model theologian [2], but they want to continue on the same dead-end path indicated by Descartes as they demonstrate themselves by proposing as masters philosophers who are all linked to Descartes, such as Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Spencer, Freud, Nietzsche, Gentile, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Severino, Vattimo, or Bontadini, who want to continue to rely on Descartes' cogito and not on the ipsum esse per se subsistens of St. Thomas, that is, on the biblical and Christian God.
As for the meaning of the term "modernity," it should be observed that there is a factual modernity which is nothing but the situation of humanity today, regardless of a judgment on what is going well and what is going badly today. None of us can escape this modernity, this being modern. In this sense, all the people living today are modern. But this type of modernity is of no interest to anyone except to know which men exist today.
The real issue of modernity, postmodernity, and modernism is not this. It is a matter of ideas and a certain moral attitude. From this point of view, being modern, progressive, and innovative is a necessity, it is a precise moral duty. It is commanded by Christianity itself. "He who does not progress in charity," says Saint Augustine, "has no charity." As the Pope continually emphasizes, the Christian is one who always walks, always renews, progresses, and improves, always advances towards the Kingdom of God, does not regress, does not turn back, cannot do without the new, but embraces it enthusiastically, assuming obviously that this new is good, as is that of the Holy Spirit, which renews the face of the earth.
The Christian does not remain attached to the old man but grows within himself the new man born from baptism. He always has to learn, certainly retains what is perennial and unchanging, but does not settle for repeating what he already knows, even if he repeats it with the utmost diligence and with all fidelity as the word of God that does not pass away but remains forever.
As for postmodernity, it is a term invented by the Cartesians, who realized the disasters caused by Cartesianism but, unwilling to give it up, call "modernity" what led to the Second World War and "postmodernity" the new makeup of Heidegger, Husserl, Vattimo, Bontadini, and Severino, with which they hope to survive as Cartesians. But we must once again note how the wolf loses its fur but not its cunning. This invention of "postmodernity" is a trick that does not deceive vigilant and critically astute minds.
Instead, there is a healthy and necessary modernity already outlined by Maritain in the 1930s, consisting of integrating into Aquinas' thought, after careful critical examination, all the progress of philosophical thought that occurred after Saint Thomas.
The modernists' instance of the times of Saint Pius X was right: the Church needed to rejuvenate and modernize itself. It should not only stand on defensive positions but also open up to the values of modernity and Cartesianism itself. It had to confront modern thought and not simply condemn its errors to assume its positive aspects.
It is not enough to preserve the deposit of faith; we must also know it better and better. It is not enough to transmit what has been learned; we must also advance research, propose new paths, and new solutions, and open new ways. We must abandon old prejudices or practices unsuitable for the times, even if they have been long-standing.
Their mistake was wanting to modernize the Church not in respect of dogma and tradition, but by changing dogmas and traditions based on Cartesian-idealist philosophy. The mistake was to doubt or invalidate, without foundation, accredited testimonies of antiquity, to abolish or cease, out of a craving for novelty or creativity, beliefs, rites, and customs that for centuries had still yielded good fruit for the sanctification of the people of God.
We must, therefore, be modern and not modernists, respectful of the modern and the postmodern, with healthy critical discernment based on the Magisterium of the Church and sound philosophy, not fanatics or idolaters of the modern.
In modernity and postmodernity, not everything is good and to be accepted, but one must sift through in the light of the post-conciliar Magisterium of the Church. One must not choose in the Gospel what pleases modernity but must choose in modernity what coincides with the Gospel. This is healthy modernity against the false and deceptive modernity of modernism.
We must recover the values of the past, still relevant today, without being stuck in the past or nostalgic, that is, we must not maintain or seek things that are no longer useful or meaningful to us or have been surpassed by doctrinal, moral, spiritual, or liturgical progress decreed by the Church, such as certain forms of pre-conciliar liturgy, with all the respect we can preserve for them and for the precious role they played in the past.
In conclusion, let us pay attention to the use of the word "modern." According to the dictionary, it has a completely innocent meaning: the modern is either what exists today or what is progressive, advanced, and better. In the mouths of modernists, it is Cartesian idealism and what Pascendi defines as "modernism."
Certainly, the modernism of Pascendi is different from that of today, but its principles are the same: everything boils down to Descartes. As for postmodernity, they are nothing but today's modernists. They imagine they have surpassed what they call modernity. But we, who are not deceived by their twists and turns, can say to them: Actions speak louder than words!
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, February 10, 2024
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/modernita-modernismo-postmodernita.html
[1] See the article by Monsignor Ignazio Sanna, former Dean of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, "Public Theology between Modernity and Postmodernity," in PATH, 2, 2023, pp. 433-449.
[2] Already Maritain, during the debate on modernism in the time of Saint Pius X, wrote a prophetic book, "Antimodern" (Edizioni Logos, Rome 1979), where he argued that St. Thomas is not only modern but ultra-modern.