2023/03/06

Himeji Castle (Japan)

81. Japanisation, part 2

The term "Japanisation" was coined some ten years ago in response to fears that Western economies would follow the same path as the Japanese economic downturn. It described a lack of political leadership and a postponement of things. Last time, I wrote about whether the Church, having failed to embrace modernism, consciously jumped on the classical nuptial mysticism at the Second Vatican Council out of a sense of crisis that it might fail to control the times. But, reading Fergus Kerr's Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians, introduced in this blog № 77, it appears that they rather shared and accepted the modern view of marriage of the time. 

According to Masahiro Yamada, a well-known Japanese sociologist involved in the government's measures to combat the declining birth rate, in Western Europe and the USA, modern societies, which were highly individualistic, were where getting married was essential, unlike pre-modern societies. And marriage was based on economic rationality and mutual affection. However, in the 1970s, structural changes in the economy created the social polarisation while the legalisation of divorce and the sexual revolution advanced. These factors strongly affected the two foundations of marriage, gradually reducing the rationality and inevitability of getting married and resulting in a shift towards a "marriage-free society." In fact, according to the OECD report, the proportion of children born outside of marriage rose rapidly in Europe and the USA during this period, from less than 10% in 1970 to over 40% in most countries in 2020. This shift in views on marriage is one of the factors supporting these regions in their efforts to recover from declining fertility. We can see it as a reflection of the fact that people in today's society begin to focus on the parent-child relationship rather than the man-woman relationship. 

According to Fergus Kerr, "the rehabilitation of Origen" was set about in 1948 in the Church. Then he writes that Henri de Lubac was already reintroducing a highly theological process, in which the relationship between the faithful and Christ was expressed as a wedding-song like relationship, and it would later blossom in the writings of Hans von Balthasar and Pope John Paul II. So, the Church might have thought it could lead the social value by expressing the relationship between Christ and the Church in the analogy of marriage, just as it was able to play a considerable role in international politics during the Cold War. 

The Second Vatican Council stated in Lumen Gentium: "Christ loves the Church as His bride, having become the model of a man loving his wife as his body"(Lumen Gentium, section 7). And this was incorporated into priestly education. However, Jesus, having made it clear that God and the Church are parent and child, and that the Church is brother and sister and mother to him, fervently prayed at the last supper that the name of his heavenly Father would protect his disciples (cf. John 17:5-26) because he knew that the heel of the Church would be bruised in this way (cf. Genesis 3:15).

Maria K. M.