Living Fearless in the Age of Uncertainty

By Fernando De Haro - Discover How Leading Thinkers View Secularization as a Gift and Vocation in Their Latest Book 'Inhabiting Our Time: Living Fearlessly in the Age of Uncertainty

It is a 21st-century motet, a polyphonic composition with four voices—philosopher Charles Taylor, Archbishop Rowan Williams, theologian Julián Carrón, and Professor Alessandra Gerolin. The latter introduces the motifs with her questions, and the male voices develop the piece a cappella without academic instruments. They do so with accents as different as Canadian, English, and Spanish are different. The theme of the motet is profane and therefore deeply sacred: "Inhabiting Our Time. Living fearlessly in the age of uncertainty." The music can be heard when one opens the newly published book of the same name.

The three performers start with an indisputable fact: we live in the "secular age." Christianity has disappeared. It's no longer enough to study the evidence for God's existence. Tradition can become a double-edged sword that wounds those who abuse it. There are no longer national identities linked to the Church. We no longer live in a society where faith adherence is numerically very significant. Christianity neither marks political structure nor intellectual and artistic traditions. The Enlightenment project that wanted to maintain human values without linking them to Christian origins has failed.

Carrón, Taylor, and Williams have lived through the transition and have had intense personal experiences at that moment when doctrine, transmitted in an orthodox way, did not give sufficient reasons to continue to believe. They are surprised that they weren't among those who abandoned the faith. It seemed normal for those who wanted to be reasonable and free.

That is why they see the "secular age" as an invitation to grow, an opportunity to increase awareness of the human condition and the value of faith. They speak of secularization as a gift, as a vocation. To have lost Christianity isn't to have lost something extraordinary but to have acquired a healthier way of life.

Gift, opportunity, vocation ... in what sense? Identifying political and faith fidelity is no longer possible; the temptation to impose it on society has disappeared. The goal isn't to defend or rebuild Christian civilization. We are in a time of paradox. The decomposition of the human highlights the irreducibility of persons. The fear that collapses discourses and rules invites us to rediscover the heart's mystery. Ultimately, it's the principle by which God educates us not to take what we thought we knew for granted. The storm brings out the safe harbor.

But how? By what method? The answer runs through the book from the first page to the last. And it's constructed from the authors' experience.

How? Certainly not through discipline and compliance. An increasingly common formula. Dostoevsky's highly topical legend of the Grand Inquisitor shows us how counterproductive it is to give up freedom to avoid risks and mistakes. Being wrong in judgment doesn't invalidate a man's ability to recognize truth.

How does the secular age become an ally? Through freedom, living one's humanity fully, being surprised at how faith responds to one's desires, and learning from others, what makes me more who I am.

Accepting and proposing faith as an extrinsic imposition on the self is unthinkable as a moral compulsion. The only weapon it has is its attractiveness. After all, Christianity is a form of hedonism. The only way to challenge freedom is to attract it, to facilitate an experience in which God is no longer a threat and a rival. Therefore, Jesus is fully human and divine and has a unique capacity to satisfy and generate freedom (the two are the same). It's necessary to experience him.

Williams, Carrón, and Taylor turn the motet into a personal testimony of what it means to live without fear. They clarify that we can't think everyone is like us or our friends. Thinking this way doesn't allow us to understand the world we live in or the vocation to which we are called.
Unrevised translation by the author - https://tinyurl.com/5n6fh2ar