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According to Herman De Dijn’s new book, Roman Catholicism, an incredible religion, editor-in-chief Erik De Smet had a chat with the author.
Herman De Dyn • “Religion is a fundamental part of human life. It’s all about wonderful things that have deep meaning for us and are so precious that we can’t do what we want with them, like the human body. Since the 1980s, some philosophers from Leuven like me no longer practice the traditional philosophy of religion. Religion is now considered and studied as an essentially human phenomenon, intrinsically linked to symbols and rituals. What counts in religion is not knowledge or mastery. It is a very specific area of life, which belongs to meaning, like ethics or art. My previous book Rituals fits into this school of thought.
What is the purpose of what you call the Louvain School?
‘Different colleagues from Louvain are each interested in their own way in a broad and human-scientific vision of religion. When you look at religion in this way, you understand that there is nothing strange about it. It fits in perfectly with the ordinary human ways of acting with meaning. Take the treatment of the human body. Scientifically speaking, bodies are just things of nature. But this is not the case in the intersubjective world: the human body is still something sacred there, even corpses deserve respect. Religion confirms it. Under the influence of modernity, this sacred is today under pressure.
We read: “Religion can survive perfectly well, even if, from a strictly rational point of view, its statements seem completely absurd.
“It’s a quote from the Polish-British philosopher Leszek Kołakowski. There are things in human life which are fundamentally unscientific and which show us that there are very different types of understanding, certainty and doubt. Religion can survive in a world dominated by science precisely because science is not everything: it does not answer the deepest questions of human life.
Our bodies are more than DNA; they are sacred.
Or take the religious concept of immortality. It is not a pseudo-physical concept. In the second part of my book, I make a distinction between religion and simple faith. Religion is not a set of irrational beliefs. It is first and foremost a service of worship: it is kneeling before Someone.
You make strong statements: “Giving in to demythologization and desecration will not arrest the decline of Catholicism, but will only strengthen and accelerate it.” What do you mean?
“By ‘demystifying’ I mean the attempt to adapt religion to modern ideas. It is impossible and disastrous. I remember the books of the late Father Roger Lenaers, who considered the God-Man Jesus as a mythological figure. He had good intentions, including helping older believers not lose faith, but good intentions are not the same as correct insight. Demythologization is based on a deep misconception of what religion is. People want to reconcile faith and science, but the creation story, for example, is not scientific information, and ignoring the historical truth of the exodus story does not affect its deeper meaning.
There is more religion than you think. Churches are emptying, but religion is creeping in where it cannot go.
After the 1960s, there was a rift that caused people to leave the Church in droves, but popular devotion remains intact. There is a huge need for something that shouldn’t be there anymore, but, says Kołakowski, that need will be filled again.
Roman Catholicism stands or falls with the sensuality of the liturgy and the sacraments celebrated in community, write to you too.
“We have lost the sense of holiness. The liturgy is linked to sensuality: the whole person is touched, in his heart and in his soul.
Catholicism in our regions has become too cerebral.
I watch with admiration the liturgical and Gregorian experiences of Dutch comedian Herman Finkers. My Antwerp colleague Walter Van Herck specifies that understanding religious language requires familiarity with pious practices, rituals, postures, contact with sacred objects… The deeper ground is a real contact with the sacred. If we can preserve that, religion will continue to exist.
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