‘SOCIAL COHESION’
The discussion about social cohesion in our society has reached a critical point.
In this brief presentation I would like to highlight what seem to me to be some basic perceptions that are being overlooked or distorted.
But first of all, some current indicators of the state of the debate.
The Government’s new ‘Commission on Integration and Cohesion’ is just beginning its work. It is ‘to engage in a new and honest debate about integration and cohesion in the UK’ (Ruth Kelly) This debate ‘will have considerably more value if we can be open and honest about the challenges we face…we must no tiptoe around important issues.’ (ibid). The remit of the Commission is described as ‘considering how local areas can make the most of the benefits delivered by increasing diversity’ and ‘how they can respond to the tensions it can sometimes cause.’
So let me take these focal points: local areas, making the most of diversity and working towards social cohesion.
It is clear that education is key to these tasks. By this I do not mean that the patterns of those of who attend a particular school, are key. To focus on admissions and the ‘social mix’ of a school is to project the problem of social cohesion onto schools, and to make them bear the brunt of its challenge and indeed bear the brunt of the blame. To me this is short-sighted, unfounded on evidence, and simply a politically convenient shifting of the blame. It is little more than putting the sins of adults onto the shoulders of their children.
Education is, of course, a key to making the most of the God-given talents of every person and preparing them to make a construction contribution to a modern society. Schooling is about preparation for adult life. It is not the performance. The test of an inclusive society does not lie in that society’s schools, but in its adult activity. The real task of education is to prepare youngsters with the mind-set, the skills and the understanding to take their part, as adults, in a profoundly mixed and pressurised society. Schools are not social workshops. They are places of education. They must be judged on their educational achievements, understood, of course, in the widest sense.
The recently published report, ‘Quality and Performance: A survey of Education in Catholic Schools’ highlights the achievements of our schools, illustrating in detail how they do indeed prepare pupils for life in modern Britain. It shatters some of the current myths about Catholic education.
The recent paper put before the House of Bishops of the Church of England lamented the fact that in much thinking about social cohesion the role of Christianity and of Church schools is being overlooked. This is true. On the whole, in popular political debate, there is little positive attention paid to the cohesive influence of Church schools up and down this land for the last hundred years at least. A broad Christian ethic is the cement of our society. It is not so frequently expressed as such, but the fact is that notions of compassion for the underdog, respect for the stranger, great charity for those in need, tolerance of the eccentric or the unusual are all based on the fundamental message of the Christian Gospel. Removed from these roots, it is highly unlikely that these crucial values will survive. The Christian Churches, with their schools, are crucial to our social cohesion in the vast majority of communities in this country. It is worth asking why there is no representative of the Christian faith on the Commission on Integration and Cohesion.
But I want to look more deeply at two particular themes of cohesion, particularly from our point of view. These two themes were well expression in the addressed of Pope Benedict XVI at Regensburg University on 12 September 2006. That speech attracted enormous publicity. But its main challenge was not so much to Islam but to our society, our western liberal democracy. That, of course, was neatly deflected by a media that does not wish to have its key assumptions challenged.
His challenge was well expressed in one sentence:
‘A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.’
This, it seems to me, describes so accurately, much of our current debate. On the one hand, as a society, we recognise only too well that we have to bring together people for whom religious faith is significant, if not central to their most profound thoughts about themselves and their lives. This is true for the 75% of people in this country who described themselves as Christian. It is true for the small but significant number of Muslims who now are at home in this country. It is true for the Jewish, Sikh, Hindu and Buddhist communities; it is true for people from India, and for the Poles and many others who are coming here from EU nations. This is the fact. Yet our politicians seem to live in a different world, a world that is purely secular and material, a world that does not permit a mature consideration of the key role of religious belief. We even have those who suggest that part of the way to prepare youngster to live in this society is by making it easy for them to opt out of religious worship and even religious education while at school. Behind this, at the end of the day, is the assertion that religious influences are bad for you and that ignorance of religion is better that exposure to it and its study.
Why is this so? Pope Benedict points very clearly to the roots of this misunderstanding and prejudice against religious belief. It lies in the distorted and truncated notion of reason which shapes our society and, to a large extent, the education it offers.
Quite simply we have sold our soul to a positivistic understanding of reason. By this is meant that knowledge and reasoning is limited to what can be positively seen, measured and physically tested through hypothesis, experiment and observation. As the French philosopher Auguste Comte, one of the fathers of positivism and the first to coin the word ‘sociology’, wrote in the 1850’s: ‘All sound thinkers since Bacon hold that the only authentic knowledge is that based on observable facts.’ Everything else becomes a matter of personal judgement or opinion.
Here I have expressed very crudely a complex issue. In doing so I do not want to appear to be dismissive of positivist science or reasoning. As the Pope said:
‘The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledge unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient to the truth and as such it embodies an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity.’
But positivist knowledge and reasoning contains its own limitation. It strives for a genuine scientific objectivity. The observer, the scientists, must strive to remove as far as possible subjective interpretation or manipulation of the ‘facts’. While this objectivity gives positivist reasoning a kind of universality, an independence from sentiment, race, nation, class etc, it is normative only on the basis of what has been observed, measured and taken to its logical conclusion.
What positive knowledge and reasoning cannot do is provide anything that is normative in value or moral judgement. It can discover, magnificently, what can be done. It cannot, properly, provide an answer to the question, ‘But should it be done?’ Positivist thinking is quite different to moral thinking for moral values are not capable of being subjected to the rigour of positivist enquiry. But nor is positivist reasoning capable of producing moral thought or principle. And this is the very heart of our problem.
Moral reasoning, on the other hand, can start with the experienced reality of the person and become a ‘trans-subjective’ way of thinking and thereby construct a moral framework which has an objectivity of its own. So, for example, the experience of truth and goodness move the thinking person beyond themselves into another kind of reasoning, and one which opens up whole new frontiers. Moral reasoning overcomes the ‘singularity’ of self, or the ‘individualism’ of a positivist culture. Moral reasoning provides a solid basis for moral community in a way which positivist reasoning cannot. And that is crucial to the task of generating a shared mind and spirit between people.
A society which, consciously or unconsciously, limits itself – and its education – to a positivist understanding of reason will find itself unable to determine shared moral principles and values. Such a society will lack cohesion. More importantly, it will be denying itself precisely the means of producing a degree of moral cohesion which is essential for shared projects and ambitions for social living. Yet those means are in fact available within our capacity of reasoning, properly understood.
In practice, moral reasoning can begin with reflection on how and where truth and goodness are experienced, explored and defined. Clearly the first place is the family and the setting in which a child first grows. The school is a crucial place of ‘moral communion’ as is every friendship and inter-personal setting. The task of a school in putting forward its vision of ‘moral communion’ is essential to its success as a contributor to education. Every school should be able to give a reasoned account of its moral perspectives, so that all can be drawn into this proper and crucial joint project: the school as a moral communion. Then it becomes a place in which students are properly prepared for the contribution they shall make to our society and its cohesiveness.
A school which cannot do this is not able to make its proper contribution to genuine social cohesion. It is rather futile to demand that schools teach ‘citizenship’ if there is neither agreement over the moral values that contribute to that citizenship, nor acceptance of the use of reason to lead us to universal values which form the basis of our common good. Some appeal to human rights as a way of filling this void. But human rights, whether expressed in a Universal Charter or by a NHS Charter of Patients’ Rights, are only part of the story. It is the moral reasoning behind such rights that is crucial, not least because that reasoning leads to an appreciation of corresponding duties.
Catholic schools are clearly well placed to do this. Our understanding of reason is not so limited. Our moral communion is well spelt out. It is, indeed, a major factor is what is described, and esteemed, as our Catholic ethos.
This kind of moral reasoning contradicts the fundamental liberal, secular claim that the crucial characteristic of the human being is that each is an individual. Within the perspectives of this claim, all that limits individuality is to be resisted. Indeed society itself is no more that a construct which allows individuals to exist and flourish without becoming enemies to one another. Moral reasoning, on the other hand, explores the truth that every human being is, essentially, communitarian, being born into a complex of relationships and finding fulfilment only within relationships. Shared moral reasoning as a basis for social cohesion is the alternative to radical individualism which has led us, so far, on a path that is clearly becoming a dead-end.
But the argument about the place of reason in our western society goes further.
Moral reasoning takes seriously human interiority. It seeks to hold together the physical, emotion, spiritual reality of the person, with its focus of the moral question of: ‘What is a good life?’ Such reasoning leads us inevitably to the question of religious belief.
The relationship between the spiritual and the religious is one of the crucial questions of today. It is being explored, and exploited, in the Health Service and, to some extent, in the Prison Service, too. In those arenas the ‘religious’ is being collapsed into the generically ‘spiritual’. But that will not do.
Any reflection on the spiritual experience of the person, and certainly the person in community, can see how that inner, spiritual life of itself reaches out for wider expression. And any examination of the sweep of mankind’s spiritual experience shows how that spiritual quest is met by a gift from without. In Christianity, that gift is known to be the revelation of God in Christ.
What is crucial, of course, is to understand the relationship between that spiritual quest of the reasoning, moral person and the transcendent gift of revelation. In Christian understanding the two meet. In Catholic understanding they do no violence to each other. Faith, the response to revelation, fulfils our human capacity and destiny. Revelation makes clear the true potential of our nature and of our reasoning. Faith complements reason, and illuminates exactly the capabilities of that reasoning. Faith and reason are the two wings on which the human spirit soars.
The implications of this are, of course, considerable.
In the first place, it makes clear why a society which has limited its appreciation of reasoning to its positivist uses will have little comprehension of the true role of religious faith. Such a society will cast faith as irrational and unscientific and therefore not admissible to the public forum or, indeed, to the forum of the university. Such a society will tolerate what it disdainfully calls ‘a faith-based education’ as if there were something demeaning to education in its association with faith. And it will quickly seize any opportunity to limit or suppress such education, as we see some politicians attempting at the present time. It will do so without regard for the actual contribution that education inspired by faith actually makes to the well-being of society. It will act out of prejudice.
More positively, this understanding of the role of reason in faith will provide a strong basis for cooperation between those who genuinely seek the well-being of society on the basis of all that reason can offer. Here is solid ground for dialogue between faith communities and government on the whole range of vexing issues that face our society. I willingly admit that in many cases this is precisely what takes place.
Similarly, the recognition of the role of reason in faith and the contribution of faith to reason is an important impetus for dialogue between the major faiths. This, clearly, was part of the invitation of Pope Benedict in his Regensburg lecture, even to the detail of choosing the quotation from the thirteen century dialogue of the Emperor Manuel II. The point of discussion was that of the use of violence in spreading the faith. The Emperor asserted that to do so was against the nature of God because it was unreasonable. The Emperor said: ‘God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature.’ This level of interfaith dialogue, involving the place of reason in our exploration of the mystery of God, is something to which we must return, not least in order to strengthen the capacity of the faiths to speak together to government about the well-being of our society.
Finally, this understanding of faith and reason together lifting us to our true capacity, both as individuals and as a society, must have its impact on our conduct of religious education. This is not so much a topic for today, but it is clear that the strengthening and maturing of faith, which we seek, requires a deepening appreciation of our faith’s role in completing and fulfilling our human nature and, in particular, its harmony with true reasoning. But this is no easy task, especially as for so long religious belief has retreated from the onslaught of positivist thinking into the enclave of personal conviction, or has taken the route of unreasoning fundamentalism. If we are to play our full part in the task of building our new society, then we need to show quite clearly the strength of our faith in terms that are accessible to others. This can only be achieved in two ways: in the recovery of the true capacity of reasoning for both moral and religious insight and, of course, in the witness of lives well lived.
Both, I believe, are available in our Catholic schools. Both need to be spoken of without apology. I know we can do so.
XVincent Nichols
Archbishop of Birmingham
(16th October 2006)
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