‘We don’t present very good arguments’
The distinguished Catholic professor of philosophy tells Luke Coppen why he believes the British Church is losing ground against secularism
30 May 2008

John Haldane: he has 'an aura of donnish calm'

A battered old car is motoring down a New York freeway. It is driven by a priest with a frizzy white beard and grey habit; in the passenger seat is a Scottish philosophy professor with a fine head of white hair. It's an ordinary day for the priest, but a life-changing one for the professor.

The car pulls up outside a sports hall. The pair emerge and enter. There, the priest celebrates Mass before a rapt congregation of several hundred. They hang on his every word and keep him for more than an hour after Mass blessing their children, prayer cards and other holy objects.

On the journey back, the professor reflects on childhood stories of saints whose preaching touched the hearts of hundreds of listeners at a time. He would once have put that down to poetic licence, but after what he's seen today he understands that the stories are literally true: it is indeed possible for a man to be so possessed by the Spirit that he attracts multitudes to God.

Professor John Haldane tells this story as a way of explaining why he's dedicated one of two new books to Fr Benedict Groeschel, founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. He sits in the Herald offices at a desk strewn with books and papers. Dressed in a check shirt and russet tie, he has an aura of donnish calm. It's clear that what Haldane feels for Groeschel is more than mere admiration; he's convinced the priest embodies some of the answers to the crisis in the Church today.

For the past half hour Haldane, philosophy professor at the University of St Andrews and a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Culture, has been discussing why the Church lost the battle over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. (It's actually a few days before the key votes but the outcome is obvious.) Haldane thinks the pro-life movement lost because it allowed the Bill's supporters to define the terms of the debate. Proponents cast the Bill in terms of utility and rights. This made it extremely difficult, he says, for Christians to argue that individual choice should be limited by an overarching good (the sanctity of human life).

"Having rather abstract debates about the nature of the human person, or something of that sort, it's very unclear how those are going to deliver policy results," he reflects. "It's very clear how utility will."

For Haldane, the Church's failure to make a convincing case has exposed a deep flaw in British Catholicism.

"I do feel, I'm afraid, that Christians have de-intellectualised over the last few decades," he says. "The current intellectual resources that Christians have available to them are very limited. We are just not able to present very good arguments. Not that the arguments aren't there, but we don't know what they are very often or how to articulate them."

He suggests that those who have tried to defend Christianity have often appealed to sentimentality, which, he says, is a dismal gift to the likes of Richard Dawkins.

"People say: 'For all that science and technology have contributed much to the development of society and economic well-being, we must have respect for the faith perspective. When I hear the words 'we must have respect for the faith perspective' I know we're in trouble. Somebody who says that doesn't have something substantial to offer. It's trying to gain the benefits that properly belong to rigorous and serious argumentation from the residual halo that surrounds the idea of religion. That is meat to Dawkins, because it tells him that these people are on the run."



Leading Catholic figures in public life are not the only casualties of the "de-intellectualisation" of the Church, argues Haldane. He believes that many lay people are in a state of "grave ignorance". Congregations now seek guidance and knowledge from secular sources, rather than the Church. It's not surprising, Haldane says, that priests are tempted to soft-pedal dogma to appease Mass-goers.

"You're so fearful of losing them, with the numbers declining, that you just end up offering vacuities," he says. "In some parts of the country there's a style of preaching that consists in discussing the previous day's sports on television. Of course, anything can be a starting point for teaching; but generally this isn't a starting point, it's a substitute. It's an effort to ingratiate yourself with the congregation by having nothing challenging to say."

All this might make you think Haldane is some kind of Jeremiah. But because he delivers his devastating conclusions in a mellow Scottish accent, punctuated by knowing chuckles, they don't sound as harsh as they might. And unlike other sharp critics of the contemporary Church, he avoids personalising his criticisms, which somehow adds to their authority.

Haldane was raised in the West of Scotland by a devout Catholic mother and convert father, and spent part of each year in London and Kent. His paternal grandfather was a staunch Presbyterian who strongly disapproved of the Catholic Church.

"I believe my grandfather died without ever knowing that his son had become a Roman Catholic," he says. "It simply would have been too traumatic."

Haldane received an outstanding Jesuit education at St Aloysius, Glasgow. In the mid 1970s he left Scotland for art school, studying first at Rochester and then at Wimbledon. Even in those bohemian circles he attended church faithfully, though he insists he wasn't "a sickly sweet pious person hanging around the candles".

In the late 1970s he switched to philosophy. His progress in the discipline was remarkable.

"I was appointed to St Andrews in 1983 and by 1988 was a reader of philosophy and then was a professor. That was unusual progress. This sounds immodest, but I was at the top of the profession pretty quickly. You don't get there without having things to say in the face of challenges."

It does sound immodest, but it's absolutely true. He is one of the world's foremost experts on St Thomas Aquinas, has taught at the most prestigious centres of learning in Britain and America, and has written authoritatively on such diverse topics as environmental ethics, modern Scottish painters and metaphysics.

Haldane's writings are, it seems to me, an attempt to bridge the divide between the head and the heart - the cause of so much error and suffering in the world today. Philosophy can help us grasp the mystery of God, but ultimately that mystery must not only be understood, it must also be lived.

This is where Fr Groeschel comes back in. For Haldane, the friar is emblematic of all the holy men and women of the Church whose words and actions lead others to a deep conversion of heart.

"It's not an adequate excuse to say these are times of great intellectual doubt and it's hard to convince people by intellectual argument," Haldane says. "My point is that there is also example and prayer and preaching. To spend time with somebody of such lived conviction is in itself a kind of proof."

John Haldane's two new books are The Church and the World: Essays Catholic and Contemporary (Gracewing, £9.99) and Seeking Meaning and Making Sense (Imprint Academic, £8.95). For further information visit gracewing.co.uk and imprint-academic.com