Faith is our experience of God and belief is our attempt to express that experience in words and symbols.

When we attempt to describe our experiences of God, we necessarily express ourselves in the symbols, words, and rituals that are products of our culture.

All of our concepts and all of our experiential interpretations are shaped to a great extent by the culture and the language out of which they emerge.

There is no belief without culture; but there can be a culture without belief. This, of course, is the situation in which many people find themselves today: in a belief desert.

Right now a lot of my friends are talking about the Pew Research Center's recent report "Modeling the Future of Religion in America".

That September 13th report predicts that, if current religious membership trends continue, Christians could make up less than half of the US population within a few decades.

It estimates that in 2020, about 64% of US Americans were Christian but that by 2070 that figure could well be at about 54% or lower.

The rise of the "nones"

The group that continues to expand is what we call the religious "nones" - those people who, when asked about their religious identity, describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or "nothing in particular."

Researchers suggest that the United States may very well be following the path taken, over the last 50 years, by many countries in Western Europe, countries that once had overwhelmingly Christian majorities but no longer do.

In Great Britain, for example, the "nones" had already surpassed Christians; and they became the largest group in 2009.

In the Netherlands, the Christian exodus accelerated in the 1970s. Today about 47% of Dutch adults say they are Christian. And in Belgium, where I currently live, we have a population of about 11.58 million.

Just under 60% say they are Christian (most of them Roman Catholic) but less than 5% of them go to church regularly. Many unused churches are being converted into apartments, stores, bars, and restaurants.

Some observers blame secularisation for our current situation.

As a historical theologian, I understand the process of secularisation; but blaming secularisation is far too simple.

As my friend and Leuven graduate, Ron Rolheiser, often observed, "Bad attitudes towards the Church feed off bad Church practices."

For example: Catholic teaching still forbids women from becoming deacons, priests, bishops, cardinals or popes, misinterpreting Jesus' and his disciples' maleness as sanctioning an all-male liturgy and clergy. (Of course there were women disciples and women apostles.)

The Church also condemns homosexual acts as a sin and considers gay individuals as "intrinsically disordered."

People lose interest in institutional religion when they find that the Church's expressions of belief and what they hear from the pulpit no longer resonate with their minds, their hearts, and contemporary life experience.

When a religion speaks more in the name of authority than with the voice of compassion, it becomes meaningless.

Moving our spiritual journey forwards

We need to find ways to understand the Divine presence, not "up there" or "out there" but "here and now" at the center of all reality, because that is where we live, love, and think.

Perhaps we need to disconnect regularly from our cellphones and drop our earbuds. We need meditation times. We need a truly contemporary spirituality.

Animated by the life, message, and spirit of Jesus, we can then move ahead in our life journeys and accompany others in their own life journeys.

There are good examples if we look closely.

A Catholic pastor, whom I visited this summer, holds contemporary faith discussions in his home. He invites young women and men in their twenties and thirties to share, discuss, and reflect together with him about their faith and their life experiences.

Some other priests whom I know, and a good handful of bishops, are trying to "rebuild the church" by returning to a 1950's style Catholicism.

They now have Latin Masses, done with their backs to the congregation. Many of these are also contemporary book-banners. History warns us, of course, that people who ban books also ban people.

A healthy spiritual journey moves forwards not backwards.

Nostalgia is fun for a while, but there is no virtue in turning-back the clock. To become a religious child again would mean to abandon the capacity to think and make one's own judgments on the basis of critical principles.

That is why the upsurge of fundamentalism today is so dangerous. It is a narrow and closed vision, which most-often nurtures fear and aggression.

Valuing the past, but not living in the past

Thinking about our human life journey, I have always been greatly concerned about education. We must insist that broad-based and honest information be passed on to the next generation.

But I am particularly concerned about the formation of teachers.

Most students who fall in love with learning do that not because of their instructional materials and school curriculum but because they encountered a teacher who encouraged them to think - to reflect on life, to ask questions, and to search for answers.

When pondering our belief today we need to hear and to help people hear the "call" of the Sacred. We do this by interpreting and thereby re-creating the meaning and power of religious language.

The truly contemporary believer has one foot anchored in contemporary life and religious consciousness and the other in historical critical consciousness. We value the past but we don't live in the past.

Our communities of faith — our churches — should be centers of excellence where people can speak courageously about their awareness of the Divine Presence and where continuing dialogue and collaboration are patterns of life.

When we explore our belief - when we reflect in depth about our faith experiences - we necessarily express ourselves in the symbols, words, and rituals which are products of our culture. We also look for resonance and dialogue with tradition: with the theological expressions of earlier cultures.

Truly authentic Christian belief, of course, can never be simply the expression of one's individual and subjective experience. We are a community of believers - a faith community. We need each other.

Expressions of belief are the result of deep reflection about my faith experience, your own faith experience, and the faith experience of the community. As I told one of my bishop friends: "We need you but you also need us!"

Belief relies on culture but can never become locked within a particular culture. Nor can it just unthinkingly venerate any particular culture. Some Roman Catholic Church leaders, for instance, are locked in a late medieval culture and still dress and think that way.

Nevertheless, when belief becomes so locked within a particular culture that it is hardly distinguishable from it, we are on the road to idolatry.

Christian belief, because its focus is on what lies within and yet beyond our culture, is continually engaged in critical reflection and critique of the contemporary and previous cultures. Critical thinking is a Christian virtue. Growth is part of life.

And so we continue our journey.

• John Alonso Dick is a historical theologian and former academic dean at the American College, KU Leuven (Belgium) and professor at the KU Leuven and the University of Ghent. His latest book is Jean Jadot: Paul's Man in Washington (Another Voice Publications, 2021).
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Like when I hear a baby cry right at the end of the Eucharistic prayer, or unlock the doors of a neglected community car that isn't mine, or wake up alone.

I was reading Eat, Pray, Love. I am not ashamed to admit reading the book, nor to enjoying it, nor to finding within its pages a beautiful tale of discernment and discovery.

Early in the book the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, describes her experience of family reunions, confused by the process everyone around her is engaged in. Everyone is seemingly on the same path.

She says, "First, you are a child, then you are a teenager, then you are a young married person, then you are a parent, then you are retired, then you are a grandparent - at every stage you know who you are."

I recreated that same list for myself.

"First, you were a child, then you were a teenager, then you were a young, confused, unmarried person, then you were a young Jesuit, then you were a middle-aged Jesuit, then you were an old Jesuit."

There, in my lumpy twin bed, pillow clutched between my legs, headlamp on high beam, reading a pop-culture contemporary classic, I began to cry.

Something about my life story felt empty and fleeting.

It felt like my life was already over.

There was no, 'what next?' Just Jesuit.

***

She's got a tomboy name, two initials that mask the femininity of what her parents chose to call her. Like Donna Jo Tanner from 'Full House' - DJ.

She works at a meat market in the town I'm living in this summer, and almost daily, a fellow Jesuit and I make trips to her store for rations of thick-sliced bacon, ground chuck, thundersticks, and aged cheddar.

I like her.

I know nothing about her, save her name and familial tie to the store.

She stands on the other side of the counter, old college t-shirt on, smiling brightly at everyone who comes in.

One day close to the 4th of July, the place was packed, and to lighten the tensions of a pre-holiday steak and chop shop in central Wisconsin, we fired a few jokes back and forth. Others joined in, too.

A pirate walks into a bar with a roll of paper towels balanced on top of his three-cornered cap.

The barkeep asks, 'Hey pirate - what's with the paper towels?'

The pirate says, 'Garrrrrrr, there's a bounty on m'head.'

We grab the goods and head out the door.

"See you soon enough," I say.

"Looking forward to it," she says warmly, and turns to the next customer.

Just down the road, I walk into a car repair shop, and while I wait, lament over an old-timey automobile advertisement.

The four happiest days of your life: your wedding day, the day you buy your home, the day your child is born, and the day you buy your new Oldsmobile.

Days I'll never experience.

I might witness marriage vows and baptize a few babies.

I may oversee the purchase of a new Jesuit community or reboot a fleet of Toyota Corollas and Camrys. But these won't be my own happy days.

I'll facilitate them to incite the joy and comfort of others. And, that doesn't always seem good enough for me.

A few months back, I'm on a train in my black clerical shirt and Roman collar, running late for a Friday night meal with some old friends.

One stop away from my destination, the train gets delayed.

Five minutes, then ten.

Eventually, the conductor lets us know that there is a medical emergency on one of the cars, and we won't move until an ambulance arrives.

Some young people behind me gripe.

Can't they just move 'em off the train?

God, I hate the L. Should have taken an Uber.

In my annoyance, I give them a less-than-kind look and walk out onto the platform.

Just then, someone the next car down sees me and flags me over.

"Father, can you come here? The guy is in bad shape. He just had a seizure."

I forego the explanation that I'm not a Father yet, that I'm running late, and that I can't imagine what I might do, and I make my way over to the man.

He is lying on his back crying softly and and breathing heavily, exhausted after his body betrayed him.

He's clothed in rags, more than a 5 o'clock shadow covering his dark, deeply wrinkled face.

But he sees me, and something like ease comes over him.

"Father," he says. "I'm so scared."

"Just be still and breathe. Help is coming, and everything will be ok."

He asks if I'll pray for him.

I take his face in my hands, and he clutches my wrists.

His eyes close, and I pray. And then, probably because I'd seen Pope Francis do it so many times, I stroke his hair back, and kiss him on the forehead.

The paramedics arrive, and I walk with the gurney as far as the ambulance. They rush him away, and I carry on.

I begin walking to my friend's house, a new place he just bought, the home he will share with his wife, two beautiful children, and two nice cars in the garage.

And, in this moment, I know my place.

As I walk, I think about how the world, despite its tumult and strife, still needs priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus and I am, despite my own failings and frustrations, willing to do it.

It is not always easy. But, I am where I should be. Just Jesuit.

Eric Immel is a Jesuit seminarian. This article was originally published in English in thejesuitpost.org which offers a Catholic perspective on the contemporary world.

Image: @ericimmel

"Faith in God, sustained by divine grace, is therefore a very important element for living in mutual dedication and conjugal fidelity," he said.

The Pope was speaking to members of the Roman Rota, the Vatican tribunal responsible for marriage cases.

He said contemporary culture "poses serious challenges to the person and the family" and calls into question "the very capacity of human beings to bond themselves to another and whether a union that lasts an entire life is truly possible".

Modern culture, he said, promotes the idea that people can "become themselves while remaining ‘autonomous' ", leading to the widespread mentality that relationships "can be interrupted at any time".

The Pope said he was not suggesting a simple, automatic link between a lack of faith and the invalidity of a marital union.

Rather, he hoped "to draw attention to how such a lack may, although not necessarily, also harm the goods of marriage", given that a reference to the natural order willed by God "is inherent in the covenant of marriage".

"The indissoluble covenant between man and woman does not require, for the purpose of sacramentality, the personal faith of those to be married," he said.

What is required, as the minimum condition, he added, is the intention to "do what the Church does" when it declares a marriage to be a sacrament.

While the question of intent should not be confused with the question of the individuals' personal faith, "it is not always possible to completely separate them".

The Pope quoted Blessed John Paul II's speech to the Roman Rota in 2003, in which he said "an attitude on the part of those getting married that does not take into account the supernatural dimension of marriage can render it null and void only if it undermines its validity on the natural level on which the sacramental sign itself takes place".

Sources:

Catholic News Service

Catholic News Agency

Zenit

Image: Catholic Register