For all practical purposes, what David Bakan means by communion is the equivalent of what Charlene Spretnak means by a deeply relational sense of life. But is there a difference between an act of communion with the people in one's immediate social context, on the one hand, and, on the other, an act of agency among the people in one's immediate social context? Stated in this way, this is a very abstract question. In concrete examples, it would probably become clear that these two orientations toward our social life are probably best understood as mutually exclusive of one another. In short, our acts of agency by definition tend to separate us to one degree or another from our surrounding social contexts. Conversely, our acts of communion by definition tend to align us with our surrounding social contexts.
Like the Catholic popes who rage against modernity, Charlene Spretnak seems to associate the pre-modern sensibility with a stronger sense of religiosity, and the sensibility of modernity with secularism. In light of the scenario with which she works, she sees the emergence of a renewed sense of interrelatedness as a harbinger for a renewed sense of religiosity.
But Protestantism emerged historically in modernity, albeit in the early modern period. In any event, Protestantism is not usually associated with a pre-modern sensibility, as Roman Catholicism usually is. In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, shouldn't the Catholic popes who rage against modernity and Charlene Spretnak give Protestants credit for having a strong sense of religiosity, albeit different from the pre-modern sense of religiosity of the Roman Catholic Church?
But isn't the longing for the pre-modern sensibility expressed by Catholic popes who rage against modernity and Charlene Spretnak a form of nostalgia? When King Odysseus is the sex slave to the sexy goddess Calypso on her island, he feels powerful nostalgia for Ithaca and his wife and son. As the example of Odysseus's nostalgia shows, nostalgia can be powerful.
In pre-modern times, the historical Jesus proclaimed the inbreaking of God's kingdom has come in the present. If he was right about this in pre-modern times, isn't this also true for us today? Or do you want to argue that only people in pre-modern times could experience the inbreaking of God's kingdom and that modernity is so powerful that it somehow prevents the inbreaking of God's kingdom in the present?
Perhaps the optimal form of the inbreaking of God's kingdom occurs in I-thou communication, to use Martin Buber's terminology. But we should not think only of the optimal forms. To continue with Martin Buber's terminology, we are usually capable of not reducing our interactions with other individual persons to I-it interactions. When we succeed in not reducing the other person with whom we are interacting to an "it," we should be able to claim that we treated the other person with appropriate regard. We were not entirely self-regarding because we did not reduce the other person to an "it." In this way, we did manage to regard the other person with an appropriate form of love. Even in modernity we can do this. So modernity is not a catastrophe. So Catholics get off the anti-modernity kick.
In his short collection of essays titled AMERICAN CATHOLIC CROSSROADS: RELIGIOUS-SECULAR ENCOUNTERS IN THE MODERN WORLD (1959), Walter Ong points out that "our loyalty in a democracy is, in some ways or other, actually a commitment to all of the millions of persons who make up our democratic society much more than it is loyalty to any "principles'" (page 43). Next, he explains, "There is thus a sense in which democracy encourages love, for commitment [to other persons] is a form of love" (page 44).
Unfortunately, to this day, for many American Catholics and for Charlene Spretnak, Walter Ong represents the road not taken.
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