Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Prämisse: Glaube als Grundlage jeder Kooperation; kultureller Wandel (Krise);

Kurzinhalt: ... in times of great social and cultural change, beliefs too are changing and, because they are only beliefs, because they are not personally acquired knowledge, such change leaves believers at a loss

Textausschnitt: 89f I have been characterizing belief. I have said it is a necessary condition if man's coming to know is to be a group enterprise, if it is to be increased and accelerated by a division of labor. I also have said that belief accounts for a major portion in the knowledge both of the man of common sense and of the individual scientist. I have submitted that the difference between science and common sense lies not in the proportion of belief but in the control of belief. (Fs)

90a I have now to draw closer to my topic and I do so by noting that in times of little social or cultural change, beliefs are stable and little open to question, but in times of great social and cultural change, beliefs too are changing and, because they are only beliefs, because they are not personally acquired knowledge, such change leaves believers at a loss. They are disorientated. They do not know which way to turn. They feel that all they have taken for granted is menaced. They may be tempted to unbelief as a liberation or, again, they may dread it as destructive of truly human living. (Fs) (notabene)

90b Such is a major premiss, and I have only to add a minor to conclude to the contemporary issue, the contemporary disease with regard to belief. The minor is that ours is a time of great social and cultural change and, further, that this is being experienced more particularly by Catholics. (Fs)

90c First, then, ours is a time of great social change. The relation of man to nature has been transformed by the discoveries of natural science, the flood of inventions, the know-how of technicians, die enterprise of industrialists, businessmen, financiers. Earlier ways of living have been disrupted by urbanism, increasing longevity, a population explosion, built-in obsolescence, mobility, detached and functional relations between persons, universal, prolonged and continuing education, instantaneous information, increasing leisure and travel, perpetually available entertainment. There is a distinctive meaning conveyed by the phrase "modern living." It connotes a varying set of more or less established innovations in the family and in manners, in society and in education, in the state and in the law, in the economy and in technology, in the Churches and the sects. The older one is, the more lively one's memory, the more easily will one recall the many manners in which our way of living has changed in the course of the present century. (Fs)