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Saint Paul
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Taking gold out of Egypt — and from Nietzsche

Jonathan Liedl
New York City
iStock/bloodua

One of my favorite Catholic events is taking place this month: the New York Encounter, February 18-20.

I’d argue that the Encounter, publicly billed as “an annual three-day cultural event in the heart of New York City, offering opportunities for education, dialogue, and friendship,” is one of the most profound displays of Catholicism in action on offer—though probably not in the mode you’re used to.

Instead of catechetical talks, formulaic faith sharings, or even Eucharistic adoration, the Encounter features things like a reflection on the life and lyrics of John Coltrane, followed by a live performance of his jazz music; a moderated conversation on “living, dating, and dying in a time of isolation” among leading academics; or a reflection from a New York Times’ columnist on the importance of community in getting through a mid-life crisisor at least it did when I first went in 2019.

To be sure, the three-day event includes Catholic essentials like Sunday Mass; it is, after all, hosted by the Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation. Clerics and ecclesial figures are well-represented among the featured speakers, and some exhibits are also more obviously “Catholic,” like a presentation on the life of Servant of God Dr. Takashi Nagai, a Catholic convert and survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, or an interactive experience of Catholic novelist Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos.

Still, the New York Encounter is decidedly unlike any other Catholic event I’ve been to, eschewing much of the pietistic lingo typically found at “churchy” conferences. So why do I insist that it’s so profoundly Catholic?

Because at the heart of the Encounter is the fundamental conviction that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all human desires—and that despite sin and its consequences, the inchoate longing for infinite Goodness, Beauty, and Truth—in a word, for God—is detectable throughout human experience. In genuine scientific inquiry, selfless quests for justice, and in artistic expressions like the jazz of John Coltrane.

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The New York Encounter embodies St. Paul’s instruction to think about “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious”—indeed, what has “any excellence” or “anything worthy of praise.” It takes seriously the claim of St. Irenaeus that “the glory of God is man fully alive.” And it imitates the Jewish people of the Old Testament, who “took gold out of Egypt” during their flight, a phrase that has come to mean incorporating the best that the secular world has to offer into a Christian worldview.

More explicitly, the Encounter’s stated inspiration is Pope Benedict XVI’s claim that “the intelligence of faith has to become the intelligence of reality.” Grounded in faith in Jesus and His Church, the Encounter allows Catholics to boldly engage the wider world with confidence and freedom.

Take, for instance, the title of this year’s Encounter: “This Urge for the Truth.” It’s actually a phrase from the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century philosopher who coined the expression “God is dead,” whose name is synonymous with atheism. “One day the wanderer slammed a door shut behind him, came to a halt, and wept,” Nietzsche wrote in The Joyous Science. “Then he said: ‘This penchant and urge for what is true, real, non-apparent, certain—how I hate it!”

The organizers of the New York Encounter didn’t choose the title of this year’s event from Nietzsche because he was an exemplary Catholic—he wasn’t. They chose it because it expresses something profoundly true—that humans possess an insatiable desire to find out what it’s all about. It’s the perfect title to represent this year’s Encounter, which will explore why the truth matters and how we can reach it, while considering everything from “fake news” and the erosion of trust in scientific institutions to gender theory and climate change.

The curiosity and confidence with which the Encounter tackles real-world challenges and questions is refreshing, especially at a time when it can seem like Catholicism is characterized more by fear of “what’s out there,” putting us in a defensive posture that is not clearly for anything, but against a lot. In fact, by weaving explicitly Catholic themes with what might typically be just considered general “humanist” interests, the Encounter makes the case emphatically: whatever is truly human belongs to the Catholic faith.

Or, put the other way, being Catholic involves being interested in all of reality. Rather than constrict, our faith expands our gaze, our interests, our involvement in life. It is relevant to everything.

As Fr. Luigi Giussani, the founder of Communion of Liberation, once wrote, “The characteristic proper to the religious sense is that of being the ultimate, inevitable dimension of every gesture, of every action, of every type of relationship.” It is “the factor we cannot escape, the criterion by which we make choices, study, produce in our working lives, join a political party, carry out scientific research, look for a wife or a husband, govern a nation.”

I won’t be able to attend the New York Encounter in person this year. But if you’re interested in getting a taste of the free, full, and faithful Catholicism that animates it, I hope you’ll join me in streaming it online. Hopefully, we can both get a bit of gold out of Egypt—and maybe some from Nietzsche.

Jonathan Liedl, a Twin Cities resident, is the senior editor of the National Catholic Register and a graduate student in theology at the Saint Paul Seminary and School of Divinity.

 


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