The modernists are already out of date

Mary Kenny
The new Holy Father, Pope Benedict, is said to be more interested in questions of secularism than questions of sex. The main thrust of his papacy, it is said, is to combat the aggressive secularism that is now so widespread among Europe’s leaders.
If he is a crusader against atheistic secularism, then it seems that he has come along at just the right moment. According to one of the most riveting books I have read in the last few months, secularism and atheism have had their day and are now in retreat.
Professor Alister McGrath is Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University. He is an Ulsterman who “converted” to atheism during the 1960s – partly out of disgust from the sectarian troubles in Northern Ireland, which he attributed purely to religion.
His secular atheism, as a young man, was perfectly sincere, and he travelled the road of the Enlightenment that others had travelled before him – ever since Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot in the 18th century. However, after many years’ experience, thinking, reading and observation, Alister McGrath came to the conclusion that atheism was going nowhere. Indeed, it had now run its course and is in retreat: it has been tried and found wanting.
Professor McGrath’s book, entitled The Twilight of Atheism: the Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World, catalogues with some scholarship just why secular atheism rose – and fell. It was claimed, by those who promoted atheism – including the thinkers of the French Enlightenment, English writers such as George Eliot and Algernon Swinburne, and Darwinist scientists – that atheistic secularism would make men and women better human beings. The birth controller Annie Besant wrote: “I do not believe in God... But I believe in Man – in Man’s redeeming power...” The poet Swinburne wrote: “Glory to man in the highest/For man is the master of things.” But, concludes Alister McGrath, far from making men and women better, humanity interpreted secularism as a licence to do as it pleased without penalties. It was Dostoyevsky, not the Enlightenment thinkers, who understood what would happen: “If God does not exist, anything is permitted.” Professor McGrath says that it was atheism which “slammed the doors of the Auschwitz gas chambers” – and perpetrated the killing gulags of the Soviet Union: these evils were carried out by men who were the “gods” of the modern era, “free from divine prohibitions or sanctions, or any fear of future divine judgment”.
The high point of atheistic secularism, claims McGrath, was between 1965, when Time magazine ran a sensational cover story asking: “Is God Dead?” and 1971, when John Lennon’s atheistic propaganda song, “Imagine” represented the zeitgeist. From the 1990s onwards, McGrath claims, religious values began to recover lost ground. It’s just that the intellectuals haven’t quite noticed it yet, or, panic-stricken, they dub all of it “fundamentalism”. McGrath shows how science and intellectual discourse are perfectly compatible with religious faith, and more significantly, how the human imagination seeks faith as a necessary aspect of living. It is, I would say, grist to the mill of Papa Benedict and his timely crusade against the European Union secularists, who, imagining that they are ultra-modern, are actually already very much out of date.
PS A young woman in Scotland became preg PS A young woman in Scotland became preg nant and sought an abortion at the Perth Royal Infirmary. The procedure was duly carried out, and she was given a contraceptive jab subsequently. She was told she might put on a little weight – and she did. Several months later, she was still pregnant, since she had conceived twins. It was too late to abort the surviving child, who was duly born.
Stacy Dow is now suing Perth Royal Infirmary for £250,000 for missing the second baby. She says she “loves her daughter Jayde to bits”, but she has been “forced” to be a 20-year-old single mum and needs the money.
What is most bewildering aspect of this report? Firstly, that Stacy is happy to tell Jayde that her twin was deliberately killed in the womb? Secondly, that medical staff are contractually obliged to carry out a killing once agreed? Thirdly, that 16-year-old girls think they are entitled to be sexually active without a spouse, and without taking responsibility for their actions? Fourthly, that people will sue for anything where there is potential “compo”? And finally, that unwanted babies can, actually, be adopted by couples who want them – no one is “forced” to be a single mum. Or all of the foregoing?
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