Sunday, August 12, 2007

Progress: Recovering what has been lost . . .

I am in Wyoming for the week, speaking at the Wyoming School of Catholic Thought. Most of the time I'll be in the mountains, off the grid. I will post if it seems worthy of your time and if I have time and an internet connection.
Gil

Romano Guardini:
"We cannot apply the modern idea of progress to the history of the church. This idea constitutes a fatal illusion. The noblest thing that lives in man is the will to become better and ever better; it is a yearning for perfection. But this will and this yearning are personal. They can be realized only in freedom -- with the attendant danger of the possibility of yes or no, of success or failure. The idea of progress confuses all this with the concept of "evolution," which is derived from the determinism of nature. This deceives man about the character of his existence and paralyzes his noblest powers."

2 comments:

David Nybakke said...

"The idea of progress confuses all this with the concept of "evolution," which is derived from the determinism of nature."

There will be words that will forever draw me back to sadness reminding me of the passing of Raymund Schwager - one of those words is evolution. Though his book, Banished from Eden Orginal Sin and Evolutionary Theory in the Drama of Salvation is, for the most part, over my head I feel that he was touching on something very important with his work with evolutionary theory. Do you know if anyone is carrying on with his work?

baumers said...

I've enjoyed the periodic Guardini quotes you offer us Gil, and I've sat with this one in particular a fair bit. I wonder how you would see it relating to the Girardian concept of the "virus" of the Gospel that slowly eats away at a given culture once it is introduced. At first glance they seem somewhat contradictory ideas...