In the latest instalment of the Dawson Society for Philosophy and Culture Speakers’ Forum, Dr Conor Sweeney, from Melbourne’s John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, led his audience on an unusual yet intriguing journey through the themes of faith, sacramental culture and evangelisation.
Held at Rosie O’Grady’s on 29 September 2015 and titled The New Evangelisation: How to be a Hobbit, the presentation framed JRR Tolkein’s hobbits as embodying a “quintessentially Catholic ethos” and, therefore, as worthy agents of evangelisation.
Dr Sweeney initially focused on the character of hobbits, portraying them as good-natured, hard-working, friendly creatures who live a slow, community-based, unscheduled life that is at odds with “our own capitalist ethic of productivity and efficiency”.
In this leisurely lifestyle oriented towards contemplation rather than productivity, Dr Sweeney identifies a Catholic ‘way of being’ that presents hobbits as possibly leading the way in the new evangelisation.
By living a culture of contemplation and leisure, Dr Sweeney stated that hobbits evangelise other hobbits in “the long way, the slow way, the way of care and gentleness, the way of stewardship, the way of cultivation, the way of tradition and memory, the way of joyful celebration and merriment”.
“The extent to which they are immersed in these practices is the extent to which they become these practices. And it is in this way that their way of life becomes credible, worthy of belief, worth protecting,” he said.
The existential challenge, Dr Sweeney illustrated, arises when the ring – symbol of both power and corruption – falls into the hands of hobbits, who are tasked to destroy it in Mount Doom.
Unlike the toxic effect it has, or may have, on almost all the characters of The Lord of the Rings, the ring does not corrupt hobbits, whose “capacity to resist the ring more strongly than most stems not from their sovereign will or hard work and effort, but rather from the deep way that they have been ‘evangelised’ by the particularly rich and integrated practices of a culture of leisure and contemplation”.
“When push comes to shove, the hobbits show themselves willing to give up all that is good in the service of some higher, more noble, and sacrificial good,” Dr Sweeney said.
At this point, Dr Sweeney’s presentation came together and his comparison of hobbit culture to Christian culture was drawn.
“The Christian for whom faith has penetrated sacramentally, that is, in the dimension of bodily practices and at a more than cognitive level, is one able to live faith in a deeply integrated and thus compelling or truly ‘evangelising’ way. Here, Christ can become a living, radiating, and transforming presence,” he said.
In other words, according to Dr Sweeney, unless one lives sacramental faith in such a way that it becomes a “culture” and therefore influences, or evangelises, other people, then faith risks being relegated to an internal, abstract idea.
What Dr Sweeney calls “the real presence of the deity in human time” can easily be lost and replaced with initiatives, programs, mission statements, plans, conferences and more
Speaking of how the challenge of the new evangelisation can be addressed, Dr Sweeney stressed the need for one fundamental ingredient: “the witness of a credible ‘cultural’ internalisation and articulation of faith at the level of childlike, baptismal smallness in the basic sacramental practices of love”.
Much like hobbits, who, in their simplicity and modesty, live their own ethos in a cultural, all-encompassing, way, Christians must internalise their Christian ethos at a cultural level in order to evangelise those with whom they come into contact.
“Put differently, unless we ourselves live Christianity at the level of sacramental culture, we cannot hope to be a light for the nations, or even for ourselves,” Dr Sweeney said.
Only then, Dr Sweeney concluded, can Christians truly become “effective agents of the new evangelisation”.
The Dawson Society for Philosophy and Culture is an incorporated association seeking to encourage lay Christian engagement with contemporary philosophical and cultural issues.
The next event, titled Understanding a Secular Age by Fr Richard Umbers, will be held on Tuesday, 27 October 2015.
Details of the Society’s lecture series can be found on www.dawsonsociety.com.au.