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“Proposing Truth and Evangelising Culture: an Australian perspective”Communione e Liberazione Rimini Meeting of Friends By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP 1. Black and white truth in a technicolour world When the great Anglican divine, John Henry Newman, became a Catholic, he considered for a time whether he should take the white wool and black cape of St Dominic. But on investigation he found that the Order of Preachers had not yet been re-established in England after the Reformation, had barely made a comeback in France after the Revolution, and that in Italy, at that time, they had great wine cellars but did not seem to do very much: “The idea I like exceedingly,” he wrote, “but it seems to me that the Dominicans are a great idea extinct.” As a Dominican myself – a member, therefore, of one of the old ecclesial movements – I am here to tell you that we are not quite extinct! We have been around the cities and especially the universities of Europe practically since their foundation. It is hard to imagine how universities such as Bologna, Cambridge, Naples, Oxford, Paris and Salamanca could have happened without the friars. They taught theology, philosophy, law, the old arts and the new sciences. They filled the teaching chairs and the students’ desks. They left behind such eccentricities as the black cappa which is still worn in many countries today, in a modified form, as the academic dress of universities, though few understand its religious significance[2]. These friars, and the women of their Order also, were driven by a single passion, summarized both in the black-and-white of their habits and in their motto, VERITAS: to contemplate the truth and communicate it to others[3]. At their best they were clothed not just in black and white wool but in words and deeds which were living testaments to the Truth of Jesus Christ. For as Don Luigi Giussani so often emphasised, it is to such personal testimony, far more than abstract propositions, that people respond. This passion to be a living testament to Truth can seem alien to our modern, relativist, subjectivist age. Strange to an age where agnosticism, even meaninglessness, are made into philosophies of life, such as ‘deconstruction’, ‘post-modernism’ and ‘nihilism’; into models of politics, such as ‘laïcité’ and ‘secular liberalism’; into ‘art’ forms, such as ‘Dadaism’ and ‘punk’; into economic models such as ‘leave everything to the market’; into the epistemology of scepticism and the ethics of ‘tolerance’; even into spiritualities such as ‘liberal Christianity’ and New Agery[4]. With Pilate our age so often answers: ‘Veritas? Quid est veritas?’ (Jn 18:38). Of course truth, if you’ve ever looked for it, can be hard to find and hold onto with any certainty, and even harder to communicate to others. Our age often lacks confidence in its ability to discern and articulate the truth. It is suspicious of universal propositions which attempt to capture complex realities and fail to allow subtle nuances. Indeed it fears those who have too much certainty, those who think they’ve got reality all sewn up. We’ve seen too many inquisitors, dictators, fundamentalists, ideologues and terrorists who think they have a monopoly on the truth, for us to make grand truth claims anymore. So it is proposed that, at least for the purposes of ordering society, we must strip our worldviews, institutions, laws and cultures of religious and moral content[5]. In its most radical form this ‘Enlightenment’ view would seek to exclude from law and daily life such traditional concepts as ‘the sanctity of life’, traditional ‘marriage’, and much else besides. It would require citizens and law-makers, businessmen and workers to check their consciences in at the cloak room before entering the polling booth, parliament or workplace.[6] But neutrality with respect to truth, whether in public life or in private, is incoherent[7]. If we cannot admit that anything is true or ‘ought’ to be done for its own sake — because ‘truth’ and ‘ought’ talk is absolutist or religious or moral — then there can be no ‘ought’ about preferring democratic institutions, tolerant communities, live-and-let-live attitudes, permissive laws and supportive cultures. So Enlightenment theorists smuggle in moral concepts under a new language. Instead of calling their policies good — because talk of good and evil, right and wrong, has the whiff of incense about it — they tell us their policies are ‘in our interests’, ‘balanced’ or ‘rational’. These supposedly neutral approaches turn out to be strategies for excluding all viewpoints other than their own from the public square and, in the end, from the ‘private’ as well. Yet ironically, their own proposals are heavily reliant on fragments of Judeo-Christian religion and the natural law morality most fully articulated by its adherents; but wrested from their context, isolated and exaggerated out of proportion, these fragments lack any coherent basis or pattern.[8] Not only does truth make claims too all-enveloping for the taste of many moderns: worse still, it often threatens us, interrogates us, cuts us to the quick – regarding our unjust social structures, institutions, policies; our own long-ingrained and firmly-held misinformation, prejudices, ideologies; our own inhumane behaviour, bad ways of relating, self-centredness. Truth tells us that we are very gifted, skilled and often generous people. But it can have harsh things to say about how we use our gifts and privilege, our qualifications and opportunities, how carefully measured is our generosity. The proposal of truth demands a response, a rethink, an intellectual, moral and spiritual conversion. It is not just because veritas is so hard to capture and communicate that we are so often resistant: but also because truth is so subversive, so demanding, so profoundly disturbing. Yet those first friars, like true Christians of all ages, were convinced that the truth is ‘Gospel’, is ‘good news’. The past century, perhaps better than any other, has seen what bad news the big lies are and how they hurt people: lies like Nazism and Communism, genocide and jihad, whole systems of propaganda and violence on which many modern states thrive and along which lines others divide[9]. Some would say ours is a culture of lies: financial lies we call advertising and tax-evasion and credit beyond our means; political lies we call pragmatism and self-promotion and party-loyalty; personal lies we call freedom, fashion and self-fulfilment. Lies like happiness through infidelity in our relationships, through aborting our babies, through abandoning our unemployed, sick or elderly people, through war with our enemies, through inattention towards indigenous people, or through rejection of asylum-seekers, or through self-indulgence and neglect of a thousand different kinds. Christians are convinced that veritas liberates us: from falsehood, superstition, fear; from the mirages created by various interests; from the illusions we create for ourselves. Truth dis-illusions, without making us cynical[10]. It releases the heart from unnecessary anxiety. It heals inauthenticity, that division of heart which is so corrupting. Truth is proposed; ideology is imposed[11]. Truth is radically humanizing; ideology is dehumanizing. As John Paul II put it: “Man remains above all a being who seeks the truth and strives to live in that truth, deepening his understanding of it through a dialogue which involves past and future generations[12].” The proposal of truth also allows us to love, because the more we know about something or especially someone love-worthy, the more we can and freely will love it or her or him. St Paul, whose Year will soon be inaugurated by the Holy Father, once sang a beautiful canticle which included these lines:
Wisdom, Paul appreciated, has come to dwell with us. God has not just revealed things about himself: he has revealed himself. “Saul, Saul,” Christ said to him on the road, “why do you persecute me?” Truth, Paul learnt, is no mere system or doctrine or book, even a holy book. Truth is a person, Jesus Christ, whom as Saul he had sought to re-crucify and whom as Paul he encountered in that blinding instant on the road to Damascus. Truth is a community of persons, the Blessed Trinity and the Church, which as Saul he had persecuted yet to which as Paul he was inexorably drawn. As Don Guissani so often taught, the more we get to know Him-Who-Is-Truth, the more we will love Him; the more we love Him, the more we will want to know him better. It is from Christ in person, Paul testifies, that we have heard the truth and received the Gospel; indeed Christ is that Truth in person, that Gospel in persona veritatis, Veritatis Splendor . Because truth frees and unites and impassions us to act authentically, credibly, veraciously, our lives can become a gospel, a story of good news, a book where the world may read the truth. Black and white is the habit of the truth-friars, because these are the colours of reading and writing, of communicating a narrative to the world. For this reason the principal organs of culture – the academy, the traditional and new media, the arts and sciences and technologies – must be fields of evangelisation and new modes of proposing the Truth whom we encounter in the person of Jesus Christ. 2. Evangelizing the culture(s) In 1976 Pope Paul VI described the “split between Gospel and culture” as the great drama of our times, one which could only be addressed by evangelizing the culture[13]. That call was re-echoed many times by Don Guissani in his encounters and writings and by John Paul II in his encyclicals and exhortations; so much of their great intelligences and pastoral efforts were devoted to that task. In his great call for the re-evangelisation of the supposedly Christian world in Christifideles Laici, John Paul II quoted his predecessor:
In an exhortation to the people of my own region John Paul II noted that:
Several insights of enduring importance regarding the evangelisation of culture are to be found in the writings of John Paul II. First, the Gospel is independent of or transcends particular cultures; yet it inevitably interacts with every culture in complex ways.[16] Why? First, because the Son of God, by taking upon himself our human nature, became incarnate within a particular people. He lived and breathed within a specific cultural context, even though his redemptive death brought salvation to all.[17] Nor is this peculiar to Jesus. Culture is the space within which every human person comes face to face with any truth, including the Gospel, and with any person, including the Christ. Just as a culture is the result of the life and activity of a human group, so the persons belonging to that group are shaped to a large extent by their culture: change the culture, change the people, and vice versa.[18] Because the Gospel comes to people who are part of a culture, the Church cannot avoid borrowing elements from human cultures in order to communicate and enrich herself. Yet this dialogue between Gospel and culture must unfold in truth, honesty, humility and respect. The goal of inculturation of the Gospel is never merely the transposition of ancient near Eastern or mediæval European church-speak into the concepts and words of other times and places. It is to convert and renew the consciences of human beings, both individually and collectively, and to fill with the light of the Gospel all their works and undertakings, their entire lives, and, indeed, the whole of the social environment in which they are engaged.[19] The Holy Spirit is therefore the prime agent of inculturation, not the individual missionary or the theological elite, and the only valid point of reference for authenticity of any act of evangelization or inculturation is the Paschal Mystery of Christ and the Church’s magisterium.[20] The evangelisation of cultures occurs at all levels of human existence, but especially at the following meeting-points or flashpoints identified by John Paul II: the liturgy;[21] kerygmatic, apologetic and catechetical activities;[22] centres of information and education, especially universities[23] and the media;[24] charitable works and action for social justice, including protection of the unborn, the handicapped and the elderly and assistance to refugees, the unemployed and the homeless;[25] the life of the Christian family[26] and the workplace;[27] and, above all, the vocational call of every person to holiness.[28] Of all Benedict XVI’s speeches since his election as Pope, the one which has so far generated the most media attention was his Regensburg lecture; it has already been much discussed at the present conference. Most commentators at the time criticized the Pope for provocatively citing a fourteenth-century colloquy between a Byzantine emperor and a Muslim intellectual in which the emperor drew some critical conclusions about Islam using violence to advance religion. Some would say that the violent reaction to Pope Benedict’s speech only proved the point. But his main concern was lost in the public furore, and it was this: that to act against reason is to act against God. “We believe that at the beginning of everything is the Eternal Word–Reason and not Unreason. With this faith we have no cause to hide, no fear of ending up in a dead end. We rejoice that we can know God! And we try to help others see the reasonableness of faith…”.[29] But the separation of faith and reason, theology and philosophy, facts and values, truth from action, Gospel from life, at any of the meeting points just noted, is fatal. In the double-pontificate of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the Church has engaged in a searching analysis and critique of the culture of modernity which it must evangelize. It has identified: genuine progress in areas such as the appreciation of human rights and solidarity with those in need; a contrary trend to an atomistic and self-protective individualism; various intellectual streams which flow into and out of modernity, including fragments of various unhelpful ‘isms’; the effects of the new ideologies on institutions, laws, social policies, and structures of virtue and of sin; the good and the harm all this does to individual consciences and lives. One great insight of this analysis has been in the area of what might be called ‘meta-evangelization’: the growing understanding that there is more to be converted than individual souls, more to be brought to the acceptance of the truth than just individual minds. Cultures, communities, traditions, institutions, to large extent shape and reshape individual values, identities and destinies; they create the space, the furniture, the language for any encounter with Christ. Therefore the Church must engage in the so-called ‘culture wars’ – without herself becoming a warrior or a victim. She must also engage in a pædogogy and cure of souls amidst cultures which can both nourish and corrupt them. So much of what I have encountered at this Rimini Meeting of Friends seems to me to be an example of the Church precisely embracing this challenge at the very meeting points or flash-points I noted above. It is Christ amongst friends proposing the Truth that is Christ to a whole culture, not just some narrow section of it. 3. Ecclesia in Australia and World Youth Day as a living proposal of truth When the Australian Cardinal Norman Gilroy arrived back from the Second Vatican Council there was a flurry of reporters on the tarmac to greet him and question him about the Council. Asked what he thought was the biggest problem in the modern world, they presumed he would, after this most progressive of Councils, answer ‘the bomb’ or ‘racism’ or ‘the population explosion’ or ‘the environmental question’. Instead, he said, clear as a bell, ‘mortal sin!’ He was right, of course, even if he was also being deliberately provocative. In the end much more important than the issues we faddishly tag the ‘crises’ of our day is the question of whether any of us will get to heaven and whether, in the meantime, we are willing to work with Christ in building up his kingdom here on earth. I was invited by the organisers of this conference to reflect a little on the experience of living Christianity in Australia today. Australia is a continent of extraordinary natural beauty and resources. It is a nation with an affluent, ever-growing economy, a peaceful, democratic polity, and a multi-ethnic, hopeful, energetic people. It is a Church young yet well-established, with a proud missionary history, and many people active in parish life and works of spiritual and corporal mercy. Australian modernity enacts important Christian values, even if their parentage is sometimes forgotten, such as respect for the dignity and inalienable rights of the person and a refusal to accept disadvantage as inevitable. We reject terrorism, torture and violence as means of political change. We recognise entitlements to education, healthcare, welfare and housing. People have given contemporary Australian culture various descriptions: tolerant, multi-cultural, fair, Christian, post-Christian, pluralist, liberal, individualistic, consumerist, comfortable, too-comfortable... But we have no cause to be smug as a Church or a society in Australia. When I was a boy of only ten years old I heard Pope Paul VI at our first Papal Mass in Sydney caution us that in Australia “there is a danger of reducing everything to an earthly humanism, to forget life’s moral and spiritual dimension and to stop caring about our necessary relationship with the Creator”[30], which as Pope John Paul II later added, “leads in turn to a practical indifference to religious truths and values, and clouds the face of divine love”.[31] More recently Pope Benedict has suggested that Australia is rapidly becoming one of the most secular or godless cultures in the world.[32] Likewise, as the bishops at the 1998 Synod of Oceania recognised, and John Paul II later echoed, Australians suffer from:
So when Pope Benedict provocatively declared Australian culture rapidly secularizing, even godless, only weeks before announcing Sydney as the host for the 23rd World Youth Day, the two announcements may not have been unconnected. The Church does not choose a place such as Sydney for a World Youth Day just because it has the most beautiful harbour in the world or the most exotic animals or the most welcoming people! World Youth Days are intended, amongst other things, to be re-evangelising events – a kind of spiritual therapy for tired and flabby, bored and confused cultures in danger of becoming what some sociologists dub ‘post-Christian’. And they allow young people to be the agents of that change, that recovery, that transformation. At the Synod of Oceania the bishops said they
Yet the Fathers of the Pacific Synod were not only convinced that young people need the Church: the Church also needs them. They wanted to assure young people that they are
The Church in every age needs the energy, creativity and passion of its young people. We have passed through a phase in Australia, as in much of the Western world, of a mixture of dogmatic secularism intolerant of religion and a softer – and, as Pope Benedict has suggested, a possibly more dangerous – relativism, bored with or indifferent to the genuinely good and true and beautiful. The new generation of young people can help lead us out of that. They will need evangelizing and may need additional formation and education in faith. But they will bring their gifts to service and leadership in the Church and perhaps fewer hang-ups than their parents’ generation. Despite the attempts of the secular culture to inoculate the young to religion by giving them small doses of dead or nearly dead religion, St. Augustine has been proved right: the human heart will never rest until it rests in God[35] – and in his holy Church.[36] The enthusiasm of young people at the Sydney World Youth Day will be a dramatic demonstration of this, as it has been in Cologne, Toronto, Rome, Paris and so many other centres already. The theme set for this World Youth Day invites personal and communal testimony to Christ in the power of the Spirit: “you will receive power when in the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). I trust that many from Italy and Europe and from CL around the world will come to give personal testimony by word and deed, bringing to our young Church an ancient faith and to our ancient land a faith ever-new. In July 2008 the young people of the world will be a sort of living Gospel where the world may read the story of Jesus Christ. Not just the story of Jesus Christ in first century Palestine. But Jesus Christ, alive and active, in our 21st century world, even at the very ends of the earth, in Australia! 1. I dedicate this lecture to Pasquale di Bari who introduced me personally to the ideals of this “Meeting of Friends”. 2. Charles Franklyn, Academical Dress from the Middle Ages to the Present Day (Lewes: W.E. Baxter, 1970). 3. The second motto of the Dominicans – contemplare et aliis tradere contemplata – is from St Thomas Aquinas. 4. Of course not every version of these philosophies and institutions equally presume or promote meaninglessness. On some of these matters see: Michael Casey, Meaninglessness: The Solutions of Nietzsche, Freud and Rorty (Melbourne: Freedom Publishing, 2001). 5. E.g. George Crowder, Liberalism and Value Pluralism (London: Continuum, 2002); Ronald Dworkin, Justice and the Good Life (Kansas UP, 1991) and other titles; Erin Kelly (ed), John’s Rawls’ Justice as Fairness: a restatement (Harvard UP, 2001); Creighton Peden and Yeager Hudson (eds), Communitarianism, Liberalism and Social Responsibility (Lewiston: Mellen, 1991); John Rawls, Political Liberalism (2nd ed, New York : Columbia UP, 2005) and other titles. 7. E.g. Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart (New York, Harper and Row, 1985); Christopher Lasch, The Minimal Self (London: Norton, 1984); Chandran Kukathas (ed), John Rawls: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers (London: Routledge, 2003); Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth, 1988) and other titles; Hayden Ramsay, Beyond Virtue: Integrity and Morality (London: Macmillan, 1997); David Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996); Jeffrey Stout, Alasdair MacIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas, The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality and the Quest for Autonomy (Notre Dame: UP, 1981); Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (CUP, 1989). 8. On the state of contemporary culture see Luigi Guissani, “Religious awareness in modern man,” Communio 25(1) (Spring 1998) 104-140 and David Schindler, “Luigi Guissani on ‘the religious sense’ and the cultural situation of our time,” Communio 25(1) (Spring 1998) 141-180. 9. Cf. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus: Encyclical on the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum (1991) §17. 10. In my reflections here on truth I am especially influenced by St Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate – a work which should not be read merely as a tract on epistemology but as also a work with important spiritual and practical implications – and the De Caritate in his Summa theologiæ which amongst other things emphasises that truth-telling to our neighbour is not merely a requirement of truthfulness and justice, but an act of friendship. 11. Cf. Centesimus annus §§29,46. 12. Centesimus annus §49; cf. John Paul II, Fides et ratio: Encyclical on the Relationship between Faith and Reason(1998). 13. Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi: Apostolic Exhortation on Evangelization in the Modern World (1975), §20. 14. John Paul II, Christifideles Laici: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful (1988) §44, citing Evangelii Nundiandi §165, 15. See John Paul II, Ecclesia in Oceania: Post-Synodal Exhortation to the Church in the Pacific (2001) §16. 16. John Paul II, Ecclesia in Asia: Post-Synodal Exhortation to the Church in the Asia (1999) §21; John Paul II, Vita Consecrata: Post-Syndol Exhortation on Consecrated Life and its Mission (1996) §98 etc. 17. John Paul II, Ecclesia in America: Post-Synodal Exhortation to the Church in the Americas (1999) §70. 18. Ecclesia in Asia §21; Ecclesia in America §70. 19. John Paul II, Sapientia Christiana: Apostolic Constitution on Ecclesiastical Universities and Faculties (1979) §3. 20. Ecclesia in Asia §21; Ecclesia in America §70. 21. John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia: Encyclical on the Eucharist and its Relationship to the Church (2003) §§6,22; John Paul II, Mane Nobiscum Domine Apostolic letter for the year of the Eucharist (2004) §§9,24. 22. John Paul II, Catechesi Tradendæ: Apostolic Exhortation on Catechesis in our Time (1979). 23. Fides et ratio §103; Vita Consecrata §98; Ecclesia in Oceania §20; Sapientia Christiana §§1,3 & General norms 1, 3.3 etc.; Ecclesia in America §71; John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater: Encyclical on the Mother of the Redeemer (1987) §37; John Paul II, Ex corde ecclesiæ: Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities (1990). 24. Catechesi Tradendæ §§14,46; Christifideles Laici §§5,23,44. 25. John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: Encyclical for the Twentieth Anniversary of “Populorum Progression” (1987) §§39-41; Centesimus Annus §§5,50-55; John Paul II, Evangelium Vitæ: Encyclical on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life (1995) §§5,78-82. 26. Ecclesia in Oceania §45; cf. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Rôle of the Christian Family in the Modern World (1981). 27. John Paul II, Laborem Exercens: Encyclical on Human Work (1981) §§110-131; Centesimus annus §32. 28. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor: Encyclical on Fundamental Questions of the Church’s Moral Teaching (1993), §§106-108. 29. Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections,” Address to a Meeting with the Representatives of Science, Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg, 12 September 2006 http://www.vatican.va/ holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html. Insightful commentaries by Richard John Neuhaus, “The Regensburg Moment,” First Things 167 (November 2006) http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=5341&var_recherche=regensburg and “Christ without culture,” First Things 172 (April 2007) http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=5460&var_recherche=regensburg 30. Paul VI, Homily at Randwick Racecourse for the 200th Anniversary of Cook’s Arrival in Australia, Sydney , 1 December 1970: AAS 63 (1971), 62. 31. Ecclesia in Oceania §18; cf. §7: “The Bishops spoke, for example, of a gradual lessening of the natural religious sense which has led to disorientation in people’s moral life and conscience. A large part of Oceania, particularly Australia and New Zealand, has entered upon an era marked by increasing secularization. In civic life, religion, and especially Christianity, is moved to the margin and tends to be regarded as a strictly private matter for the individual with little relevance to public life. Religious convictions and the insights of faith are at times denied their due role in forming people’s consciences. Likewise, the Church and other religious bodies have a diminished voice in public affairs. In today’s world, more advanced technology, greater knowledge of human nature and behaviour, and worldwide political and economic developments pose new and difficult questions for the peoples of Oceania. In presenting Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life, the Church must respond in new and effective ways to these moral and social questions without ever allowing her voice to be silenced or her witness to be marginalized.” 32. Benedict XVI, Address to a Meeting with Diocesan Clergy of Aosta, 25 July 2005. 35. St Augustine, Confessions, Book 1, ch 1. Immediately after his famous line about the restless soul’s craving for God, Augustine makes the Pauline point that such a soul will only find God through an encounter with the Church’s preacher: “Our hearts are restless till they find rest in you. So Lord, help me understand which should be first: to call on you or to know you… But how could anyone call on you without first knowing you?... Perhaps we call on you so that we may know you. ‘But how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? How shall they believe without a preacher?’… Let me seek you, Lord, in calling on you, and call on you in believing in you; for you have been preached to us. O Lord, my faith calls on you – that faith you gave me through the incarnation of your Son, that faith you breathed into me through the ministry of your preacher.” 36. Reflecting upon the fall of communism in Centesimus annus, John Paul II noted: “But the true cause of the new developments was the spiritual void brought about by atheism, which deprived the younger generations of a sense of direction and in many cases led them, in the irrepressible search for personal identity and for the meaning of life, to rediscover the religious roots of their national cultures, and to rediscover the person of Christ himself as the existentially adequate response to the desire in every human heart for goodness, truth and life. This search was supported by the witness of those who, in difficult circumstances and under persecution, remained faithful to God. Marxism had promised to uproot the need for God from the human heart, but the results have shown that it is not possible to succeed in this without throwing the heart into turmoil.” (§24). |
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