Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, October 8 2024
Speaker: Noelle Mering (Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (Washington D.C.)
With her book ‘Awake not woke, A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology’ Noelle Mering offered an insightful reflection on the need to preserve relationships in an age like ours, marked by a certain ideological colonisation. On 8 October, she illustrated her work by holding an in-depth seminar at the invitation of the ROR group.
It is clear that our society is currently experiencing a profound crisis of narrative and meaning. The crisis does not only affect the means but above all the ends and purposes, thereby overwhelming the understanding of everything else. This crisis of meaning also affects the Christian community, because it fractures the conscience of individuals within it exponentially affecting community life as well. Losing a moral vocabulary means losing the ability to name the object one is referring to and to act ‘well’ on that basis.
It is important to realise that words have the power to reveal reality, which is why we must renounce manipulating their meaning, on pain of undermining the truth itself. The Christian must not turn into a ‘censor’, but neither must he renounce stating uncomfortable truths for the sake of political correctness or false compassion. The ability to speak the truth is intimately linked to our freedom to live a meaningful life: ‘By accepting these categories that seek to set love against truth, Christians lose the understanding not only of how we should live but also of why we should live’.
Woke culture, which ostensibly poses itself as an ideology of rupture, by appealing to individual forms of human injustice, actually pursues the goal of trapping all forms of human interaction in a power struggle. Penetrating its premises, history and tactics, Mering shows how such an approach is at odds with reason, person and authority: the three building blocks of the Christian Logos. It is an ideology that conflicts with Christianity not only because it conceals fundamentalist traits, but because it takes the form of idolatry. It elevates the will above reason, the pressure group over the person, human power over divine authority. It all boils-down, then, to a war of words against the Word of the Gospel.
To simply attempt to dismiss the reality of woke culture would be a short-sighted attitude. The first objective must therefore be for Christians to be able to answer man’s existential questions according to undistorted truths. The second draws its strength from relationship: relationship with God, relationship with men. There is often more persuasive force in an invitation to dinner from a family in which the relationship is genuine, than in a close negotiation on a purely moral level.
