From a reader, a religious order priest, who ran across an old column of mine reflecting on our trip to Quebec several years ago: Christian Culture: What’s It Good For?

I am writing to you because I experienced last summer the same contrast between my visits to Montreal’s magnificient churches and the spirit of modern Quebec society. In those pilgrim sites, I felt that uncanny sense of being at home that most Catholics experience in Catholic churches in foreign lands.  They were islands of the familiar. 

But modern Quebec left me cold as does most of contemporary western Europe.  There are good reasons for this, though.  Like you, I have a real interest in questions of culture, and religion.  In seminary I loaded up on sociology courses. It was an intellectually rich time.  Among the best books I recall from that time addressed the issue of modern secularism in the most compelling way while accounting for the fairly intense religiosity of Americans.  Jose Casanova’s Public Religions in the Modern World observes that where religion was identified with the state (the formerly Catholic nations, the British Commonwealth, and Scandinavian countries),  it has died. Conversely, where religious participation has been an _expression of the individual’s personal experience(most notably the US, and to some degree African and Asian Christianity), it continues to thrive.  The only cases where a quasi-statist church has thrived is when it is a force against a foreign oppression : Ireland, Poland, Chile, the Philipeans among others).  In these cases, the quasi-statist religion usually goes through a precipitous collapse when the oppression is ended.  This is clearly happening in all of the nations listed.

Interestingly, Quebec is one of the finest examples of the last category.  The Church was the bastion of French identity and the protector and prophet of the rights of the Quebequois until after WWII.  When such a protector and prophet was no longer needed in Canada, the Church in Quebec which had controlled all educational and medical institutions, suddenly became just another statist religion with far to much control over secular affairs.  The quiet revolution of the late 1960’s saw the nationalization of every institution in Quebec which was not specifically a parish or a shrine.  The revolt against the former dominance of the Church in all public affairs in Quebec is still going on.

So, your question Christian Culture, What is it good for? Is an excellent one.  It clearly is not good as a dominant force over society, but it can be a leaven which no other element in society can provide.  This is Jesus’ metaphor.  Curiously, both Soviet communism and a number of instances of rightist dictatorship were defeated by movements of the human spirit which were both intensely cultural and intensely Christian.  The falls of some of the most oppressive and violent regimes including Marcos, Pinochet, Duvalier and the Soviet Union were all accomplished without bloodshed (or nearly so) in massive popular outpourings of courage and hope all happened in Catholic nations.  Ghandi would have been jealous of such large scale non-violent insurrections of justice over oppression.  He had never been so successful in achieving his preached vision. 

Those are arguably isolated and modern cases which one could dismiss.  Perhaps the best way to see some value in a Christian culture is to see some of the negative effects of modern secular society.  But, as you have said, that is another article, or book.

This note reminded me of something else: a blog post from a while back from Barbara Nicolosi, reflecting on her trip to Spain:

For me, it was such a stunning blend of the sacred with the secular. I was actually a little scandalized by the way Our Blessed Mother was draped in a soccer banner in the basilica. But that is my sick American "separation of faith and state" problem. I don’t think she has a problem with it at all. In fact, I think the Divine was surely smiling down at all the people bringing their children to be photographed next to the Madonna of Pilar, up there wearing Zaragossa’s team colors. (I bought a nice sized Our Lady of Pilar statue and brought it home. Tonight I am going to have a ritual ceremony of draping her in a Boston Red Sox T-shirt…oh, some of you think I am kidding…)

This leads me to what became the central paradox I chewed over as we moved from gorgeous churches in El Escoriel to to Madrid to Barcelona.

Everywhere I go here in the States, I whine and complain that we need beauty in our churches. I see it as a necessary component to weathering life in a holy way "in this valley of tears." So, here’s the problem. Europe is chock-full of beauty in their churches, but they have mostly lost their faith.

So, what does that say about my theories about the urgent relationship between aestethical/liturgical beauty and faith? Maybe it is good that we Americans are surrounded by ugliness in our churches? Somebody help…