First Things: Recovering Our Christian Intellectual Tradition
Fr. Sam Zeno Conedera, SJ: What do you consider the greatest challenge to the “rational credibility of Christianity”?
Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.: Challenges to Christianity change from epoch to epoch and across different cultures in a given age, including our own. Today in the northern hemisphere there are two central challenges to Christian belief that are prevalent, culturally speaking. The first is what Pius IX called “indifferentism,” the idea that all religions and worldviews are equally arbitrary or implausible. At base this is a form of skepticism that leads to spiritual resignation; it is the mark of intellectual discouragement and malaise or despair. It frequently arises from affluence and cultural distractions such as wealth, pleasure, and ambition. The culture of secular liberalism may hope to aspire to something more than this, but it is not clear that it succeeds.
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