Basic Books

The Age of Secularization

By Augusto del Noce

Edited and translated by Carlo Lancellotti

(McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal 2017)

At times we have to turn away from the current dramatic situation in Catholicism: the ever-increasing radicalism of Bergoglio and his associates and allies accompanied by the continuing spread, at a lower level, of traditionalist countercurrents in liturgy and morality. To understand what is going on now we have to get to the philosophical and historical roots of the current crisis. It is a grave weakness particularly of Americans to want immediate action in the absence of a solid intellectual foundation. Over the next several weeks I’d like to review some recently published or republished books that, in my judgment, help to provide that basis.

Augusto del Noce was a distinguished Catholic philosopher whose works, thanks to the sterling efforts of Professor Carlo Lancellotti of the City University of New York, are only now appearing in English translation. The Age of Secularization, prompted especially by the tumultuous years of the 1960s, was published in Italy in 1970 and our translation appeared in 2017! But we can think of many other key Catholic authors who remain largely or totally untranslated in English: Roberto de Mattei, Martin Mosebach, Gómez Dávila, etc. The Catholic traditionalist still has to be a polyglot if he wants to discover the breadth of Catholic thought.

Augusto del Noce resolutely champions the primacy of philosophical reflection. In conformity with the classical tradition, it is philosophy that provides the necessary means to understanding current society and events. In these respects, as in many others, del Noce will remind the reader of the late Thomas Molnar. Indeed, Professor de Mattei informs me that on at least one occasion they both appeared together at a conference. And The Age of Secularization is more directly reminiscent of several works of Molnar published around the same time (e.g., Ecumenism or New Reformation aka Dialogues and Ideologues, 1968) The intellectual background and approach of the two authors differ though. Thomas Molnar operates in the French and general European intellectual world and favors a lengthy historical analysis of any topic. Del Noce is more focused on the 19th and 20th centuries and lives within the Italian philosophical tradition. He devotes much time to Italian history and national favorites such as Croce, Gentile and Rosmini. I don’t think the intellectual context of the author, however, is a barrier to the non-Italian reader – Prof. Lancellotti’s excellent footnotes help greatly. And del Noce also draws on and analyzes St. Thomas, St Augustine, Simone Weil and various Marxists as well.

Now del Noce seeks to situate the events of the postwar period in their spiritual and intellectual context. And were not the 1960’s the period of most profound social and moral change? We note – surprisingly or not – that for this task del Noce does not feel the need to cite the texts of the Second Vatican Council and more recent Papal pronouncements (except for a tangential and actually critical reference to Gaudium et Spes). That would seem odd for a “Catholic” philosopher – given that the fathers of the Council claimed for themselves the ability to read “the signs of the times.” But then del Noce’s assessment of modernity does not agree at all with the Conciliar optimism. Indeed, much of The Age of Secularization is a critique of progressive Catholicism – Teilhardian or otherwise -which del Noce’s identifies with a renewal of the Modernism condemned by Pope Pius X.

Del Noce identifies Western secular society – the society of well-being, or the “technological” or “affluent” society – as the dominant force today and the absolute antithesis of religion. For it utterly denies the very possibility of a religious dimension. In that regard it surpasses Marxism as a foe of Christianity. For that ideology, although inherently atheistic, retains an inverted religious element in dialectical materialism.

Del Noce describes the “age of secularization” in these words: We started from the ideals of universal liberation, and it seems the world is moving towards the organization of oligarchies and sociocratic castes like have never been seen before. The words freedom, democracy and justice are untouchable, and rights are constantly declared, but this does not alter the fact that actual reality is marching towards a synthesis of all the forms of despotism that ever appeared in history.

Del Noce’s perspectives are original and creative. For example, the post-World War II era should be seen as not a crisis of faith, but a crisis of the secular alternatives to faith: “philosophical” secularism, fascism, Nazism and communism. One would think that this crisis should open the door once again to the transcendent. In del Noce’s view, the student protests of 1968 were in their origin an understandable uprising against the dehumanizing affluent society. Tragically, though, these movements were imbued from the start with anarchistic, totalitarian and libertine elements so that the revolts ended up reinforcing, rather than abolishing, the affluent society.

Del Noce addresses the issues of “Christian democracy” – the author acknowledges a tension between the two concepts – especially as practiced in Italy after World War II. This period of Christian democratic hegemony saw the greatest decline in Christian moral values – not in favor of Marxism but hedonism and eroticism. Del Noce still advocates the notion of a “Catholic” party – against Catholic progressives who were condemning it- but on the basis of a radical reinvestigation of its own principles. But then del Noce is not one to offer “solutions” or a political program. He stakes out for himself a unique political stance: liberal (in the European sense), Maritainian, but not as these terms were commonly understood in 1970. I do have here one criticism of Prof. Lancellotti’s otherwise outstanding work as editor and translator. In the chapter dealing most directly with question of Christian democracy the translator had deleted a number of passages in which del Noce turned his attention to concrete political issues of his day. Admittedly these paragraphs would require footnotes to explain exactly what was going on in those years – but also might enable us to get a better sense of del Noce’s judgment as a political actor.

Finally, let me quote del Noce who (apparently relying on Max Scheler) defines the characteristics that distinguish the “traditional” idea of man (which “achieved its fullness in Christian thought”) from the “instrumentalist” understanding of the current age:

(A) man possesses in himself an agent whose essence is divine, which every nature does not contain subjectively;
(b) this agent and the power that eternally shapes and organizes the world are in their principle one and the same – hence reason’s aptitude at knowing the world;
(c) as logos and human reason, this agent is capable of exercising power and realizing its own ideal content, without any intervention by the inclinations and sensations that men and animals share in common – that is in history itself there is a priority of ideal causality.

A bit challenging? – perhaps. But it summarizes del Noce’s unshakeable conviction of the primacy of the spiritual, of contemplation and of philosophical reflection. I can only mention in this review a few of the innumerable insights of del Noce. The Age of Secularization is essential reading for anyone who wants to find out what is driving developments, not just in 1970, but now. And, perhaps, also find insights and principles that provide a foundation for Catholic spiritual survival.