https://mailchi.mp/sophiainstitute/the-greatest-commandment?e=61c15f3aed

Anything, irrespective of whether it is labelled as “secular humanism”, that wills the good of another….is in the catagory of “antithetical” to evil. We hear it proclaimed in the Gloria of Holy Mass as follows:

Glory to God in the highest. And on earth peace to people of good will.We praise You. We bless You. We adore you. We glorify You. We give You thanks for Your great glory. O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father almighty. O Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son. O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father: you Who take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. You Who take away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. You Who sit at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us. For you alone are holy. You alone are the Lord. You alone, O Jesus Christ, are most high. Together with the Holy Spirit in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

It needs to be clarified that this prayer heartily acknowledges the validity of declaring peace to ALL people of good will. This includes everyone and anyone of good will, with good will in their hearts irrespective of whether they are coming from this faith, that denomination, or from a position of general good will unaligned with any particular faith. It does not exclude people from being legitimately entitled to receive God’s peace on the grounds that they are of a particular good-willed persuasion. Nor does it state that only those people of a specific good-willed persuasion, excluding other good-willed persuasions not akin to that one, are entitled to receive God’s peace.

As great as this work by Fulton Sheen may be, and no doubt it is most likely to be of inestimable worth insofar as delving into what may properly constitute the depths of God’s love for the world He made, the way Sophia Institute Press have promoted it, in effect implying that a humanist persuasion can only come from a secular vantage point and even when it does, that just all the more figures there cannot be much good in it, has somewhat contradicted the ethic enshrined in The Gloria. For the statement all people of good will is non-descript except for the particularity of being good-willed. More to, it does specifiy the word all rather than only some or many. There are however, no particularities of persuasion other than that of general good will. We can rightly conclude that this is a statement of declaration that is of a truly universal inclusivity, which btw, is honouring the Catholic tradition in the sense of it being universally applicable rather than only applicable to this specific or that specific people of good-will. After all, the Greek root word Katholikos, from where we derive the English form Catholic, means universal.

This brings us to the following conjecture: What is the point of trying to evangelize, if you are unwilling to begin the honourable task by sitting at table with someone who though good-willed, is not of the exact same persuasion or position of origination or belief as you insofar as their own good-will is concerned? Is not the purpose of evangelism to seek an open dialogue of good-will with another in the hope of encountering something that will enliven our own faith as well as help them anchor more deeply in theirs or their own appreciation of what good-will is insofar as deepening their love of wanting more good to come about in life, in the world around them alongside our own love for the good of another and therefore God? When I speak of good-will, I am speaking from a standpoint of good-will as an all-encompassing confluence of attitudes, beliefs, and actions stemming from a heart that has been awakened to honouring the dictates of conscience as enscribed in the natural law and imprinted on and within the human heart primordially by God.

Moreover, it must be clarified that humanism as a philosophical concept differs markedly and in some critical respects is opposed to anthropocentrism. On the surface the two concepts may appear to be objectively aligned but in actual fact, that isn’t the case.

Humanism refers to a position of sharing in the spirit of human solidarity or a universal togetherness or unity for the common good whereas anthropocentrism exclusively places the interests of man above all else. Therefore, it must also be said that the former, i.e. humanism, when seen in this light, is actually in alignment with Gospel values while the latter, i.e. anthropocentrism is rather antithetical as in its extreme form, it regards only humanity as being ‘worth something’ in comparison to all else, including God Himself. In other words, it does the bidding of the antichrist by bolstering humanity and human accomplishment above all else, even to take the place of God in designing the future. It is a position that sees the rest of creation from a completely materialistic perspective as a mere utility for the ‘betterment’ of human existance. It has very little or no regard for the sacredness of life as God had ordained it and is thus completely preoccupied with ‘progress’ as the sole purpose of existance. It is completely Laissez Faire and utilitarian in its perception of life.

By contrast humanism is oriented towards the betterment of life but with a far more ethical appreciation of life as being purposeful not so much merely for ‘progress’ sake but more because there is an ineffible mystery to life that escapes the grasp of pure reason yet is to some degree able to be perceived, comprehended, experientially grasped by the reasoning endowed by our senses which inevitably takes us beyond our mere intellectual grapplings to the great awesome yonder of murmurings welling up from within our primeordial heartbeat.

And yes, this is because the essence of our true humanity is awakened at the level of awareness that lies beyond the intellect alone. For it is in the depths of the human spirit or soul that the heart can listen to the voice of conscience. And it is precisely this voice that speaks purposefully to our minds, to the foray of our intellectual awareness. Hence we can take the heart’s wisdom and unpack it in our minds and this is the combination or should I say, the collaboration between our heart’s wisdom and the creativity of our minds that undergirds the best kinds of humanistic thought.

Inasmuch as Sophia Institute Press have it right in a great plethora of ways, for they are a publishing house that has released a huge diversity of wonderful material on religion and spirituality from a Catholic perspective, at times bits and peices of advertizing catch-phrases may seem slightly amiss or ambiguous in some ways. And upon receiving the latest e-newsletter, I just so happened to stumble across one such instance where such an ambiguity showed itself in the body of the preamble to a new release, taken from Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s work on the primacy of love. And I felt the tugging of my conscience to write on this so as to flesh it out, that is to say, to lay my thoughts on this matter bare as my heart could not reconcile the disconnect between the use of the term humanism in the Sophia Institute preamble and the concept of “good will” as eluded to in the Gloria. For in spite of what some people may see as secular humanism, the fact remains, these observers cannot prove that the elements of good will espoused by or contained within that particular humanist outlook were or were not influenced by God in some way, shape or form. Hence it would be presumptuous to throw everything out that is willy-nilly labelled as secular humanist since if there is anything of good will at all contained within it, we would do well not to as the saying goes, throw the baby out with the bath water 😯!

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Key Words: The Gloria, Good Will, Primordial, Humanism, Anthropocentrism, Utilitarian.