Inattentive Unworldliness: Albacete, Balthasar, and “The Secularization of Interiority”
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| Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete and Hans Urs von Balthasar (Images taken from the Albacete Forum FB page and Wikimedia Commons) |
A great rock band searches for the
same combustible force that fueled the expansion of the universe after the big
bang, they want the earth to shake and spit fire, they want the sky to split
apart and for God to pour out.
-
Bruce Springsteen[1]
Give me a lover and he feels what I
am feeling: give me one who yearns, give me one who hungers… give me one like
this, and he knows what I am saying. But if I speak to one who is cold, he does
not know what I am saying.
-
St. Augustine of Hippo[2]
I apologize in advance to the reader
because, for the first time, I will be starting off a blog post with a story
involving a crude joke. But this is a true story, and one that illustrates a
very important point about our culture today.
I was once conversing with a few
friends/schoolmates – young men my age – in the Theology department office of
the University I’m currently studying in. I do not remember how the conversation
topic pivoted into sexual ethics, particularly on the ethics of masturbation. I
didn’t want to dive deep immediately by using arguments from natural law or
Church teaching because I know that such arguments belong to a worldview they
most probably do not subscribe to. So, in order to “ease into” the point I
wanted to make, I needed to break the ice first. My method of choice? A
masturbation joke I heard from a comedian which basically goes: “Masturbation
is the gayest thing a man can do, because it involves you being provided
pleasure by a man, while you also provide pleasure to that same man.” (I
altered the joke a little bit to make it more ‘PG’) My point in beginning with
that joke is to reveal, through humor, the unmanliness of masturbation, which
(hopefully for me) could then open to further discussions and to give them a
sense that Church teaching is reasonable on this issue.
I quite honestly do not remember
exactly if the joke landed (it probably didn’t), but I will never forget what
one of them told me.
“So, are you saying that all men
are gay?”
I recall being taken aback by this
response and not being able to clearly give a sufficient reply to it. But the
point he’s trying to make is clear: If masturbation is “gay,” then all men are
gay, since all men masturbate. The source of my struggle is that I
know this isn’t true but I can’t provide, at that moment, a compelling case for
what I know. My attempts at breaking the ice failed, but the point coming
from the other side is clear: It is simply a fact of life that all men engage
in “pleasuring themselves” and we can’t do anything about it because that fact
is as undeniable as the blue-ness of the sky.
Simply put, what my conversation
partner has is an interior “lens,” so to speak, which allows him to see
sexuality in a way that masturbation (and presumably, other lustful acts) is
just taken for granted as a normal, undeniable aspect of it. Such acts are, so
to speak, part of the “identity” of sexuality. In other words, if you have a
reproductive organ, you will engage in one or more of these acts. It is what it
is.
That conversation reminded me of a
term I learned from St. John Paul II.
“Masters of Suspicion”
Perhaps you have the same reaction
when you read about the response of my interlocutor. Perhaps you know that this
“lens”, this worldview, that sees lust as a normal and undeniable part of
sexuality is obviously wrong, either because you haven’t engaged with such acts
before and do not intend to, or because you indeed have engaged with such acts
before but now, you have found a way to break free from them. But, perhaps,
just like me in that situation, you do not know how to properly characterize
this “lens” and thus, do not know how to respond properly to people who have
it. How do we (especially us Christians) communicate to such people and present
to them a compelling case against their claims?
I
believe it all comes down to worldview, specifically on how one views human
desire. If you have read my last two blogs (here and here), you probably
have noticed that both are united by a common theme: the yearning of our
hearts. My Christmas essay focused on the desire of humanity – as expressed in
many artworks from the very beginning of civilization – to unite Ultimate
Beauty with the human body, and how this is fulfilled in the Incarnation of
Christ. My other blog post on the movie I’m Perfect talked about the
fundamental cry of eros for a love that does not end, how death is that
one unbeaten threat that prohibits us from satisfying that cry, but most
importantly, how the resurrection of Jesus is God’s solution to this unbeaten
threat and how it gave us a love that is stronger than death. Basically, I
wanted to communicate what I think is a message that modern culture desperately
needs to hear: that eros, our “upward impulse… toward what is true,
good, and beautiful,”[3] is made
for infinite satisfaction, and the Infinite One does not hold this
satisfaction back from us. On the contrary, the point of Christianity is for
Him to look for us, so that He can give us this infinite satisfaction, which
only He can give.
Unfortunately,
eros is seen by many today as something merely directed to the finite,
specific things of this world. Our “Augustinian restlessness” (“Our hearts are
restless…”) is, for many, no longer looking for rest in the only One that could
provide it rest. Our culture only sees it as something about a worldly reality.
For instance, Freudians might only look at eros in a “libidinistic” way;
Marxists might only see nothing else in our existential trajectories except
economic struggle; or, a young man might only see sexuality as inevitably tied
to masturbatory tendencies. These people are what St. John Paul II calls, in
his Theology of the Body, as the “masters of suspicion.”
 |
| Karl Marx, a Master of Suspicion |
These
masters of suspicion, according to the sainted pope, are those who “judge and
accuse the human ‘heart,’”[4] which, in
and of itself, is not a bad thing to do. After all, our hearts are indeed
imperfect and in need of redemption. The problem, for John Paul II, lies in the
fact that these people “have limited (themselves) to putting (our) heart(s) in
a state of continual suspicion.”[5] In other
words, like Christianity, these so-called “masters” detect something “off” in
our interior dispositions, but, unlike Christianity which sees these
dispositions as redeemable, they only see nothing else but the twisted versions
of these dispositions. Recall the story I told above: If x means people are y,
then all people are y, since we will inevitably do x. That’s the message
of the masters of suspicion, which is contrary to the message of the Christian
faith, which insists that we can transcend x.
The late Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete
considers these suspicious masters as thinkers who “sought to unmask the
religious impulse as merely the expression of some profound alienation such as
sexual conflict, or economic justice, or fear.”[6]
For these people, to say that our deepest longing is religious in nature is a
terrible mischaracterization, because such longing is nothing but “an
unresolved psychosexual problem,”[7] or a
political cry of one’s oppressed state, or anything worldly. The point is that,
if we are to talk about eros, it can be anything but religious/directed
to the divine.
“Secularization of Interiority”
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| Lorenzo Albacete AKA "The Mystical Monsignor" |
The great project, therefore, of the
masters of suspicion is what Albacete has termed the “secularization of
interiority”[8] (from the
Latin secula, meaning ages/centuries/this world). What they have
done (or are trying to do) is to redirect our religious impulse – our
interiority – toward this world and
this world alone. In other words, “What they propose can be called a
‘secularization’ of religious interiority deprived of transcendence.”[9] Our
hearts’ yearning is no longer seen as made for something – or Someone – “out
there,” but only for things “right here.”
How did
this come about? I propose that the reason why such a project has been very
successful is due to the rampant relativism of our times. When we hear
the same old assertions of many about their personal autonomy (e.g. My body,
my choice; Who are you to tell me what to do?), what we hear is an
insistence that only I and I alone am the sole arbiter of my destiny. They are
engaging in what Fr. Aidan Nichols has termed the “I-I principle”[10]: In
scrutinizing things, in finding solutions to problems, and looking for a
criteria in evaluating everything, my only & ultimate basis is myself, my
subjectivity.
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| The "My Body, My Choice" slogan is the I-I principle in Action (via Getty Images) |
The
problem is that, when we posit a divine reality that is existentially bigger
than us, that would automatically falsify the I-I principle, because that would
mean I’m no longer the ultimate arbiter of my life, but God. Hence, to preserve
the principle, I cannot give any sort of reference to God Who can demand things
of me and redeem me, including the satisfaction of my desires. So, to
successfully secularize my interiority, I have to make use of relativism – the
exaltation/deification of the self – as my weapon against anything that would
threaten the success of my project. To be a successful master of suspicion is
therefore to be a relativist, or what Henri De Lubac called an “atheist
humanist,”[11] whether
we’re aware of it or not.
“Inattentive Unworldliness”
One of the problems with the
secularization of interiority is that it goes against commonsensical human
tendencies. To say that human desire is only about this thing or that
thing is to deny the obvious fact that nothing in this world ever
satisfied human desire. If a porn addict is right that his eros is all
about saying yes to his lustful compulsions, why does he still remain restless?
If a glutton is right that his yearnings are all about food, why does he become
hungry again? If my yearnings are all about one thing (e.g. political
liberation), then why am I looking for other things (e.g. a good hike to
the top of the mountains, a good conversation, a great movie, a perfect lover,
a good night’s sleep)? All I’m saying is this: If my desires are all about this
world (or about one thing in this world), then why does this world fail to
fulfill me, to give me the ultimate rest I’m looking for?
In
other words, those who have secularized their interior hunger for the Infinite
are suffering from “inattentive unworldliness,” because they do not notice
(inattentive) that the world is obviously filled with multiple things
that cannot be shoved into a single category like “science,” “the libido,” or
“political struggle” (hence, un-, or anti-, worldliness, because
they do not see the world in its entirety) and that this world obviously points
to a world other than itself. Albacete explains that such “‘inattentive
unworldliness’ is truly a deadly obstacle to an authentic religious experience because
it implies a suppression of those questions from which the religious quest
begins.”[12]
And if
this inattentive unworldliness is the solution to that useless (if not harmful)
thing known as “religion,” if it is correct for us to suppress our “hunt” for
the divine and secularize it, then why does the evidence show otherwise? Why is
our pornified culture generating men who are quite literally brain damaged?[13] Why are
women more miserable today and feel more objectified than ever if it is true
that they should prioritize financial success and sexual licentiousness?[14] Why is
our civilization toward death if it is true that rampant contraception will
improve society?[15] “You will
know them by their fruits” as Christ said (Mt 7:16). And a closer look at the
fruits of our society shows that the worldview given to us by the masters of
suspicion does not work.
“The Prudishness of Secularism”
That being said, I cannot help but
detect an irony here. Many in our culture today see the Church’s moral
teachings (e.g. Catholic sexual ethics) as “suppressive” or “prudish.” They
think that all that the Church can offer when it comes to morality are prohibitions;
that the best way to deal with our desires is to “push them down” in a place
within our hearts which we shouldn’t revisit ever again. In other words, all
they see with regards Christian morality is one, big “NO.”
The
problem is that they do not realize that behind the Church’s big “NO” to
immoral behavior is an even bigger “YES”: Yes to human dignity; yes to our
transcendent destinies; yes to the elevation of eros; yes to the
existential rest that only God can give. When the masters of suspicion only see
our desires as directed to the worldly, the Church gives us a wider vision of
human desire as meant for the heavenly. As C.S. Lewis once wrote:
Indeed, if we consider the unblushing
promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the
Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too
weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and
ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to
go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the
offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.[16]
Let
that sink in for a moment. “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too
weak… like an ignorant child who wants
to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by
the offer of a holiday at the sea.” The secularization of interiority only
provides us with such existential “mud pies,” but it fails to give us what we
really want: “a holiday at the sea”: the Infinite joy that comes from seeing
God face-to-face.
In
other words, it is not the Church which is suppressive. It is not the Church
which is reductionistic. It is the masters of suspicion! Albacete
writes:
Religious interiority is more than
psychological interiority. It is something that transcends us… Having lost the
capacity to experience what this might mean we suppress our thirst for
transcendence by reducing our desire. In other words we do not allow ourselves
to desire that much.[17]
Herein
lies the fundamental problem of the secularization of interiority: “We do not
allow ourselves to desire that much.” For instance, the person who sees that
human sexuality has no choice but to be tied to an anti-communion, lustful, yet
lonely self-pleasure has forgotten that
The orientation to eternity is what
defines human beings… We talk about different “sexual orientations” in human
life. But the ultimate orientation for human sexuality is the human heart’s
yearning for infinity. Human sexuality, therefore, is a sign of eternity, which
is continually sought by human beings.[18]
“The Unsurpassable
Incomprehensibility of Divine Love”
So, what do we do with our desires?
Recall that the secularization of interiority is due to the relativistic “I-I
principle.” This principle sees everything as below myself, and thus,
everything is subject to me because I am the ultimate criterion for judgment
when it comes to my dispositions, actions, yearnings, and where I direct such
yearnings towards. We have also seen how it denies basic reality, bore bad
fruits, and taught us to be reductionistic when it comes to our heart’s deepest
longings.
May I suggest that we combat the “I-I
principle” with the “I-world principle.”[19]
Instead of seeing ourselves as sole, independent beings that bow to no one, the
“I-world principle” sees us as always “being-in-relation-to.” It tells us that
we are not arbiters of reality; rather, reality is much bigger than us and it
has something amazing in store for us that our minds couldn’t even fathom or
imagine. In other words, instead of trying to drag down reality to our limited
perspective (whether positivist, scientistic, Freudian, Marxist, etc.), we allow
ourselves to be “scooped up” by this same reality. That way, instead of
directing our “Augustinian restlessness” below us, we direct it above us,
to the stars, “to infinity… and beyond.” Simply put, we combat “inattentive
unworldliness” with “attentive worldliness.” “Religion”, says Albacete, “is
truly born of an attentive worldliness.”[20]
Attentive worldliness assures us that
“religious experience… is not an escape from this world; it is an affirmation
of it. It is a way of standing before reality… and regarding it with a
passionate curiosity. It is a contemplative posture before all that exists.”[21] What
might this contemplative posture look like? Let me give a scenario. Suppose
you’re standing before Michelangelo’s statue of David. You, being
appreciative of the arts as you are, want to honor Michelangelo, to truly enjoy
and properly experience that great beauty that you see in this statue. What do
you do? Do you take a pick axe, strike the statue multiple times until it
breaks into smaller pieces, in order for you to be able to “break it down”
intellectually? You could, but in this case, you are no longer appreciating the
whole, because you broke it down into bits and pieces.
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| Michelangelo's David (Original photo by Jörg Bittner Unna) |
Or, do you instead go around the
statue, behold the finished product with all its glory, and “meditate” before
the great sculpture? Is this not the best way to appreciate Michelangelo’s
artistry? Isn’t this the very reason why he sculpted it in the first place: Not
for people to destroy it for the sake of analyzing it, but to simply perceive
it with love?
The masters of suspicion have this
“pick axe” mentality. They want to fixate on the bits and pieces of the world
in the name of “science,” etc. but as a consequence, cannot appreciate the
whole. It is the “contemplative posture” which allows us to do this. It is this
posture that allows us to say, “There’s more to life than this.” It is
this posture that makes us realize, “I, indeed, am looking for God.”
What Albacete calls the
“contemplative posture” is similar (if not identical) to what Hans Urs von
Balthasar calls “theological aesthetics.”[22]
In Love Alone is Credible, Balthasar rejects the tendency of many of us
to read divine revelation in reductionist ways. First, he rejects what he calls
“the cosmological reduction,” or our inclination to “present (the) content (of
revelation) as something that can be established and justified by pure reason.”[23] Then, he
rejects “the anthropological reduction,” which sees man as the arbiter of
divine truth. This is expressed within Catholic theology as modernism,
where “anthropological determination (is) the criterion for revelation.”[24] Such
approaches are wrong because we are not allowing God to speak for Himself and
we are not allowing ourselves “to accept what is given just as it offers
itself.”[25] Simply
put, we are once again breaking down the statue of David instead of
appreciating it as it presents itself to us.
 |
| Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the 20th century (crossroadsinitiative.com) |
Theological aesthetics is Balthasar’s
alternative to these reductionisms. When we encounter something aesthetically
pleasing, something beautiful, our first interior posture is not to quantify,
measure, or calculate it. Our first interior posture is simply to behold it,
to let it speak for itself. A young man, prior to seeing the beautiful face of
a young woman, is not consciously presupposing in his mind before the
experience, “Okay, so, here are the features that I would like to see in a
woman’s face: a, b, c…” And when the young woman finally turns her face toward
him, he does not pull out a measuring tape or a meter stick to see if she has
the right proportions. Instead, he simply perceives it; he simply allows
himself to be smitten by a reality that communicates itself to him; he simply
allows himself to be “taken up” by an experience that he cannot reduce to mere
mathematics. He doesn’t have a “pick axe” mentality at that moment. He simply sees
the whole. As Balthasar wrote,
Just as in mutual love, where the
other as other is encountered in a freedom that will never be brought
under my control, so too in aesthetic perception it is impossible to reduce the
appearing form [Gestalt] to my power of imagination.[26]
This Gestalt,
this holistic form, is what the masters of suspicion can never present to us.
Because they are so fixated on the particulars, they have forgotten the universal,
the whole reality of everything, which is beyond quantification, beyond
animalistic tendencies, beyond political struggle; yes, beyond everything that
is visible. They have forgotten about God Himself, Who, out of sheer Love for
Creation, took on flesh, and has revealed to us a glory so great that can only
be seen
By the self-interpreting
revelation-form of love itself. And this form is so majestic that we are led to
adore it from a reverent distance whenever we perceive it, even if it does not
explicitly command us to do so.[27]
So, my friends, let us not be
like the masters of suspicion who cannot allow the world, and the Creator Who
made it, to interpret themselves for us, because they are so obsessed with
interpreting both within their limited points-of-view. Let us allow reality to
“shock” us once more, to let “the Wholly-Other and Ever-Greater (to)...
surprise us in the ultimate and unsurpassable incomprehensibility of divine
love.”[28] This
“unsurpassable incomprehensibility” is what the “I-I principle” rejects. But
let us not follow in their footsteps. Let us have the courage to long for
the infinite, to have the “contemplative posture” that will allow us to
perceive the Gestalt of Divine Love. To close out this section, let us
remember that
The majesty of absolute love... is
the most fundamental phenomenon of revelation... Divine Love can appear in such
an overwhelming way that its glorious majesty throws one to the ground; it
shines out as the last word and leaves one no choice but to respond in the mode
of pure, blind obedience.[29]
May we
have the guts to be overwhelmed.
Conclusion: An Invitation to
Rehabilitate Desire
To end this essay, let me just invite
everyone, especially those who have secularized their interior yearnings, to
abandon the lens which the masters of suspicion have imposed on our culture.
Let us not be afraid to ask for the grace of God (whether or not you have faith
in Him, it won’t hurt to try to ask) to heal and redirect our desire toward its
transcendent goal. May this essay also be an invitation for many skeptics who
are hostile to the message of faith, especially the Catholic faith that I adhere
to, to be a little bit more open to reconsidering the claims of religion. Maybe
we’re not the crazy ones, you know?
And to you, dear reader, my hope and
prayer is for you to have the fortitude to be a pilgrim of desire. We
have not yet reached the very end of this journey, and sometimes it will be
very hard to the point where we’ll be inclined to give up and once again direct
our yearnings to the earthly. Let us be on this journey together. Let’s pray
for one another and aid one another in love. One day, the One Whom we are
looking for will finally bring us to the eternal banquet!
Stay hopeful. Stay open.
[1] Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. (2020, May 4). Bruce
Springsteen Inducts U2 at 2005 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5onUXFV9Vto
[2] Quoted in Dietrich Von Hildebrand. Beauty
in the Light of the Redemption. Steubenville, Ohio, Hildebrand Press, 2019.
75.
[3] St. John Paul II, TOB 48:1
[4] TOB 46:1
[5] TOb 46:2
[6] Albacete, Lorenzo. God at the Ritz:
Attraction to Infinity. New York, Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002. 20.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid. 43.
[9] Ibid. 42.
[10] Nichols, Aidan. A Key to Balthasar: Hans
Urs von Balthasar on Beauty, Goodness and Truth. London, Darton, Longman
& Todd, 2011. 25.
[11] Henri De Lubac. The Drama of Atheist
Humanism. San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1998.
[12] God at the Ritz. 50.
[13] Your Brain On Porn. (2025, May 26). Research
- Your Brain On Porn - Links to different categories of studies. Your Brain
on Porn. https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/research/
[14] Stevenson, B., & Wolfers, J. (2009). The
Paradox of Declining Female Happiness. National Bureau of Economic Research.
https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Stevenson_ParadoxDecliningFemaleHappiness_Dec08.pdf. See also Petherick, A. (2016, May 18). Gains
in women’s rights haven’t made women happier. Why is that? The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-rights-happiness-wellbeing-gender-gap
[15] LaFraniere, S. (2024, February 26). Russians
feel abortion’s complications. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/02/22/russians-feel-abortions-complications/af554503-eef3-46f0-804a-ebf30518a3c5/. See also Onishi, N. (2017, November 30). A
generation in Japan faces a lonely death. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/japan-lonely-deaths-the-end.html
[16] Lewis, CS. The Weight of Glory (HarperCollins,
2001). 26
[17] God at the Ritz. 42-43.
[18] Ibid. 120.
[19] A Key to Balthasar. 24-25.
[20] God at the Ritz. 52.
[21] Ibid. 27.
[22] Von Balthasar, Hans Urs. Love Alone Is
Credible. San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2015.
[23] Ibid. 26.
[24] Ibid. 40.
[25] A Key to Balthasar. 4.
[26] Love Alone Is Credible. 53.
[27] Ibid. 56.
[28] Ibid. 57.
[29] Ibid. 56-57.
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