As we progress through these chapters
of Dawson’s magnificent book, “Religion and Progress”, the changes that took
place during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries can seem very depressing
from a Catholic point of view; I’m sure that they will indeed have depressed many!
However, the Church has already lived these events and circumstances, and that
is why there is today a call for a New Evangelisation. Now that doesn’t seem so
depressing, does it! It is a world subject to these influences, and not a utopia, that
we are called to evangelise.
So far Dawson has principally discussed
philosophical movements and political trends. Economic methods were also in
play during this era. On the European continent the two great movements of the
age were science and reason, and theology and faith. In England there existed a
via media between the two. This was the search for a practical approach to the
building of civilization: the Industrial Revolution.
The social movement of activism, which
was already underway in England since the Reformation, enabled the development
of industry and thrift. In this context, work was like a religious vocation.
The Industrial Revolution was led by the new moral force and asceticism that
served the ideals of duty and of economic power. However, the reality was that
economic freedom was sacrificed to economic conquest and exploitation, paving
the way for a new, vast, process of managing and forming society.
As the new Industrial empire spread,
traditional culture, customs, and economy were broken down. The world became a
single community with an international economic life and ideals.
Modern Europe and America are the heirs
of the old Roman Empire; achieved not now by military force, but through
Liberal ideas and political democracy. Material progress led to a social
crisis. But, even though industrialization raised the general standard of life,
it degraded the position of the ordinary worker.
Socialism also grew out of Liberalism.
The Marxist interpretation of history actually expresses the failure of
material progress to satisfy the human condition, on whose labour the whole new
enterprise had come into being. Marxism is in reality a dis-affection with the
modern social order and a demand for another one.
The exploitation of the world by the
newly industrialised Europe was too rapid and could not be maintained. Today,
those factors are reversed, and now non-Western countries are taking their
share of the world market. In England the heavy industries
declined sharply, whilst its need for imported foods increased.
No comments:
Post a Comment