Secularism and the New Age

‘The opposite of one great truth, may well be another great truth’ –
Neils Bohr, staring into a quantum universe, where the Newtonian Realm of Facts had broken down irretrievably …

Friends, in these posts, I have tried to weave a thread of paradox and contradiction. Because it is only through *holding* the opposites, rather than *abandoning* them or *flattening* them, that we can be truly open.

I am going to try to illustrate. These last posts have suggested dark images of secularism and the New Age culture. But different images are simultaneously possible:

Secularism, which won great rights for humankind, often in spite of, rather than because of the Church. Secularism which hastened to the aid of women, enslaved minorities, those *persecuted* for religion and other orientations. Let us not forget that in a less secular age, homosexuals went to PRISON. To take but a single example, we can feel the horror of Oscar Wilde, sentenced to two years hard labour at Reading Gaol, and who died three years after his release, age 46, his health and standing in the world destroyed.

And secularism, in whose desacralised womb, our soulless, capitalistic world has been formed, with increasingly soulless results: utilitarianism, political correctness, banal mediocrity. Soulless architecture. Soulless rote learning for our children. Soulless universities, focussed ever more on technological and business proficiency, and dumbed-down, not in science, but in the *humanities*. Soulless, manipulative brainwashing, labelled ‘harmless’ advertising. And so much else besides …

Oh, what are you Mystery of Secularism? Filled with contradiction and paradox, you who *abandoned* the opposites, who abandoned the Sacred, to defend the glory of human freedom, and tragically established and entrenched so much else besides freedom … Is your end result more openness or less?

And then there is the Mystery of the New Age culture, in whose womb, I spent nearly two decades.

The New Age culture in which humbling and beautiful psychological sensitivity, sincerity and idealism can definitely be found, as well open-ness to the world of the spirit beyond materialism.

But at what expense? In my own experience at least, at the expense of many riches, intellectual, cultural, artistic, riches of tradition and the wider world. And beyond these all, the riches of His Body and Blood. sensitising me ever more to the human condition …

Yes, my pain-streaked verdict on the New Age now, is that great riches become abandoned or flattened. As I shall try to address in the following days, the holistic movement is predicated – consciously or not - on a negation of tradition, that is not really so ‘holistic’ or open at all. Even though its intentions are frequently noble indeed. Far more noble than many see. And here is a source for tears.

When I go into the depth of my heart, I can also sense the tears inasmuch as - as far as I can see - the noble intentions of the Mystery of Secularism and the Mystery of the New Age walk hand in hand, together a long way, a very long way of the journey.

And I join with thinkers as diverse as Rudolf Steiner and John Paul the Great in saying: something else is needed.