Culture and Contemplation: Catholicism in the Twenty-First Century1

1 The following article is from a lecture given by Rev. Romanus Cessario, O.P., as his inaugural lecture after receiving the degree of sacrae theologiae magister on 10 November 2013. The lecture was delivered at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C 2 “On the Religious Significance of Vatican II: Discourse at the Last General Session of Vatican II” (7 December 1965), Acta Apostolicae Sedis 58 (1966): 51-59, trans. Michael Woodward and John P. Hittinger in Readdressing the Liberal State. Reading Maritains’s “Man and the State,” ed. Timothy Fuller and John P. Hittinger (Washington, D.C.: American Maritain Association, 2001), 248. 453 The Thomist 77 (2013): 453-71 CULTURE AND CONTEMPLATION: CATHOLICISM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY1 ROMANUS CESSARIO, O.P., S.T.M. St. John’s Seminary Brighton, Massachusetts I. THE COUNCIL IN AMERICA With the help of this council, by a doctrine of human nature and the world which is theological and theocentric, as they say, the Church has turned the minds of men to herself. . . . She embraces what the world at first considers absurd—the claim that God exists. But we are strongly confident that the age will later of its own accord acknowledge this belief as humane, wise and beneficial. For God is: He actually exists; He lives; He is a person; He is providential, endowed with infinite goodness, and He is not only good in himself, but especially good in regards to us; He is our creator, our truth, our happiness; so much so that when a man tries to fix his mind and heart on God through contemplation he elicits an act of his own spirit which is the most fine and perfect of all; thus even in the modern world, in all fields of human endeavor, we can and should aspire to this contemplative act so that all human activity is raised and perfected in its own order from within.2 Thus did Pope Paul VI address the closing session of the Second Vatican Council on 7 December 1965. ROMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. 454 3 See Paul VI, “Religious Significance,” 248. 4 Ibid., 247: “What is the religious importance of our council? By the term ‘religious’ we mean to signify our relationship to God, which is, after all, why the Church exists, what she believes, what she hopes for, what she loves; this personal relationship to God defines what she is and what she does.” Together with this explicit avowal of the excellence that persons and culture derive from contemplation, the Holy Father also proffered an evaluation of mid-twentieth-century moral outlooks. In December 1965—as members of that year’s profession class for the Province of Saint Joseph were taking up the study of philosophy at Dover, Massachusetts, under Dominican masters such as Raymond Smith († 1990) and William A. Wallace—Paul VI drew a stark picture of the ethos that dominated his generation. Blessed Pope John XXIII had convoked the council, so his immediate successor reported, at a time when men preferred terrestrial kingdoms to heavenly ones, at a time when men habitually forgot about God, at a time when men displaced God’s law in order to proclaim their own autonomy, at a time when il laicismo (rendered in English as “secularism”) trumped the highest wisdom, at a time when men’s souls experienced the desolation to which acting outside of reason leads, and, finally, at a time when all organized religion experienced a general decline.3 The religious significance of the Second Vatican Council, so Paul VI added confidently, would help Catholics and persons of good will to address these challenging cultural circumstances.4 I would like to report that the pope’s message rallied the Dominican students at Dover. To the best of my recollection, however, the council’s termination did not alter the focus of their daily regime. The student brothers went about assiduously studying cosmology and the philosophy of science, metaphysics and the history of philosophy, while at the same time faithfully observing the rhythms of conventual life. Of course, there were the occasional breaks for canoeing or skating on the Charles River...