No one theory can adequately explain the multitude of changes and upheavals experienced by contemporary society. There have been many attempts to craft an explanatory metanarrative of modernity, particularly in terms of “secularization” as well as narratives of technological or political emancipation. One of the more innovative and convincing new approaches is that of the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa. Rosa has proposed “social acceleration” as a new theory of modernity, but this theory has no stable “core” in terms of definitive ideological or sociological causes.[1] Rather, Rosa presents three “motors” that fuel acceleration and are fundamentally interrelated. The acceleration and economization of life are both coordinated with functional differentiation and the phenomenon of “individualization,” a process whereby people become increasingly independent from traditional social structures and wherein they conceive of themselves primarily as individuals rather than as members of a family or social group.

The Roman Catholic Church has, in most historical and theological analyses, had a rather hostile relationship to liberal modernity, despite the fact that the church helped to produce the modern world and the thought patterns that continue to govern it. The conciliarist tradition facilitated the growth of medieval constitutionalism, thereby providing a crucial bridge to modern constitutionalism, or government by consent.[2] And although the church engaged fruitfully, albeit briefly, with Enlightenment thought prior to the French Revolution, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are very much a story of resistance to modernity and its principles. The Second Vatican Council changed the antagonistic stance of the church to some degree, but in many areas the “conflict” mentality has not gone away. Since its explicit modern beginnings under Leo XIII, Catholic Social Teaching has been rather consistent in its hostility to liberalism, both economic and philosophical.[3] Successive popes have criticized liberalism and especially individualism in particular as sources of moral and social ills. Most recently, Pope Francis has written: “Individualism does not make us more free, more equal, more fraternal. The mere sum of individual interests is not capable of generating a better world for the whole human family … Radical individualism is a virus that is extremely difficult to eliminate.”[4]

What is consistently left out of papal encyclicals and ecclesial rhetoric, however, are the ways in which the church has often generated the conditions and structures for individualization, and by extension the processes of acceleration and economization of the life-world espoused by various forms of liberalism. The church has often contributed to the shape of contemporary culture that it so sharply criticizes, and so it is important to point to where and how this has occurred as well as the impact that these actions have on the church.

I will proceed in this article by first illustrating how economics, individualization, and social acceleration are linked together. This will differentiate between individualization as a process and individualism as a program, while acknowledging the practical inseparability of the two. It is important to clearly see the links between these elements of modernity in order to understand the context in which human self-understanding has been restructured around an economic image of humanity. Second, I will argue that despite the critiques of individualization and liberalism, especially in papal encyclicals of the last century, the church has been either complicit or active in promoting individualization at a structural level, and thereby also implicitly affirming an economic anthropology. This occurs in three different areas: the interiorization of faith, ecclesial centralization and clerical bureaucratization, and through the corporatization of the church including the promotion of digital immediacy. Each of these areas must be addressed from a theological and cultural perspective in the future if the church is to advance meaningful critiques of modern society and if it is to remain a faith community capable of critical self-reflection. Finally, I will address some of the recent developments in the papacy of Francis, in particular his social and economic critiques and attempts at structural reform within the church.

Daniel Minch, University of Graz

Read Daniel Minch’s full article, Pastoral Criticism, Structural Collaboration: The Role of Ecclesial Power Structures in Modernization and Economic Individualization, with free access on Cambridge Core now.

[1] Rosa, Hartmut, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, trans. Trejo-Mathys, Jonathan, New Directions for Critical Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

[2] Tierney, Brian, “Medieval Canon Law and Western Constitutionalism,” The Catholic Historical Review 52, no. 1 (1966): 1–17.

[3] Prusak, Bernard P., The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 252–54.

[4] Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship (hereafter cited in text as FT), October 3, 2020, 105, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html.