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Much is pointing us toward God
The cover of a new book by Bobby Angel, 'The Postmodern Predicament", published by Sophia Institute Press for release February 2025.
Image courtesy Sophia Institute Press
January 17, 2025
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CNS photo/Cindy Wooden
Bobby Angel knows the “postmodern genie is out of the bottle” and cannot be undone.
The aim of the Florida-based Catholic’s forthcoming book The Postmodern Predicament: And a Roadmap for Recovery and Restoration is not a fantastical dream about reversing course to the worldview championed during Europe’s Age of Enlightenment or any other period receiving retrospective sentimentalization.
Amid a postmodernist landscape that has evidentially amplified tribalism, spawned reality fragmentation online and ushered in so much deconstructionism that psychological distresses such as gender dysphoria are intensely rising, Angel said we must consider and appreciate how God is presently at work.
“There is new life and new growth,” said the author and speaker with over two decades of experience in Catholic ministry. “In parts of the world where Christianity was dead and dying, you're seeing new fruits and new initiatives pop up. There is always a reason to hope and see that God is continuing to renew His Church.”
Angel said he sees evidence of renewal with the abundance of faith-based apps, podcasts, social media accounts and YouTube channels that have emerged in recent years. He also notices more celebrities openly proclaiming their faith in Christ. And given that his book does render a critique of how postmodernism has had a deleterious effect on contemporary art, churches investing in beautiful architecture is a pleasing development.
“People want to either renovate or create some new church buildings that are not just these drab horizontal, abstract stained glass art church halls,” said Angel. “The things should be pointing us to God. You walk in, and you say, ‘wow, I know what this space is for,’ because the space itself is educating us.”
While suggesting that the focus on mental health today can be viewed as “overblown,” Angel suggested this discussion is also valuably renewing the call for mindfulness and rest.
“There is a lot of ground to speak about how (we) are not meant to be workaholics,” said Angel. “We are not meant to be disembodied and addicted to technology. Rest, Christ-centred mindfulness and other practices can rejuvenate the soul and lead to reintegration.”
A motivation for Angel, a father of five with his wife Jackie, to write this book was to help readers avoid falling prey to nihilism, seclusion and relativism. His corrective is helping lay people easily understand key life-giving and spiritually-awakening philosophical concepts that can help the reader re-embrace — or recognize for the first time — what is good and true in the world and how it all emanates from Christ.
The co-host of the Conversations with Jackie and Bobby podcast embraces a maxim once disseminated by Pope John Paul II: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” This was how the late pontiff opened his September 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio, which expressly explores the relationship between faith and reason.” It was a document Angel studied as a seminarian at St. John Vianney College Seminary.
“You need the revelation of God, but you also need the curious, active participation of utilizing our free will to ask those questions,” said Angel. “Why am I here? Am I allowing God’s grace to complete what we cannot achieve? Human philosophy and human reason can only take us so far. In humility, we need God's grace to snatch us up and lead the rest of the way.”
Angel expressed fascination with how St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas compellingly articulated how Christian doctrine was the fulfillment of philosophy espoused by Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. For example, Aquinas’ Five Ways to prove God’s existence alluded to Aristotle’s Four Causes of why something exists and changes in nature.
Reviving the childlike wonder necessary to contemplate these big philosophical and theological ideas — Jesus Himself said we must be like little children to attain the Kingdom of Heaven — is perhaps not the easiest notion. Angel said society is rife with the “spiritual pitfalls of apathy and acedia.”
His solution to combat these snares while he led high school retreats was confiscating phones for the whole event. He wanted the students to unplug from the noise and “doom scrolling.”
“By the end of the retreat, they were just in it with each other,” said Angel. “They were free playing, playing board games and having conversations. It didn’t take but a day. They reclaimed their childlikeness. And a lot of them didn't want to get the phones back by the end of it.”
As for adults, Angel said they must strive for discipline and actively challenge themselves to disengage from technology a bit more each week.
The Postmodern Predicament: And a Roadmap for Recovery and Restoration will be published on Feb. 18. Visit sophiainstitute.com for more details.
(Amundson is an associate editor and writer for The Catholic Register.)
A version of this story appeared in the January 19, 2025, issue of The Catholic Registerwith the headline "Church renewal in a post-modern age".
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