Passing on the Gift of Life: Radical Hope and Creative Minorities

Picture: Karl Bodmer (1840), Crow Indians, Wikimedia Commons, PD-old-100-expired.

First published as: “Generar: esperanza radical y minorías creativas,” in: Revista Española de Teología 85 (2025) 83-102. Translated and published here with permission.

What is causing the crisis of declining birth rates, and what can be done about it? Demographic decline points to a deeper crisis: a collapse in life’s very meaning. This is not just a matter of personal confusion, but a widespread cultural uncertainty about what makes life great and beautiful—about our ultimate purpose (our human telos) and the goodness of raising the next generation. It is as if our idea of happiness has become detached from the kind of life-giving love that builds a family. What will it take for our culture to recover its generative drive? Can faith spark new hope? If so, what kind of hope? And if hope is the key, what is the connection between the hope of forming a family in which to live a fulfilled life and the ultimate hope of salvation?

There is an initial response to these questions, and in what follows it will guide our investigation. It can be summed up as follows: The cultural collapse of our ultimate purpose—our human telos—calls for a radical hope. This is a hope that not only seeks to bring children into the world for eternal life but also strives to find a foretaste of that eternal life within family life itself.

To clarify what this radical hope involves, we will first examine the nature of the current crisis in passing on the gift of life, framing it as a crisis of human purpose (telos). Second, we will explore the link between having radical hope and giving life. We will draw on Philip Jenkins’s research on faith and fertility, as well as theological discussions on the nature of hope. This analysis will help define the specific kind of hope we are discussing and show why it can be a powerful motivation for starting a family. Finally, we will address the social and ecclesial importance of the creative minorities who live by this radical hope.

I. The Crisis of Procreation as a Crisis of Human Purpose

To grasp the radical nature of the current generative crisis, we need to clarify three points. First, we must determine the kind of cultural collapse we are facing, a task for which the work of psychoanalyst and philosopher Jonathan Lear will be helpful. Second, we will examine what has happened to the fundamental sense of gratitude for the gift of life. Finally, drawing on the thought of Rémi Brague, we will consider the reasons behind the modern reluctance to have children.

1. Radical Hope in the Thought of Jonathan Lear

Jonathan Lear’s analysis of what happened to the Crow Nation in the 19th-century American West can help us understand the scope of the cultural devastation we now face when it comes to passing on the gift of life.^[1]

“After this, nothing happened.”^[2] With these laconic words, Chief Plenty Coups summed up the history of his people. What did he mean? The buffalo were gone, and the U.S. government had forced the tribe onto a reservation. A nomadic people whose lives revolved around hunting and intertribal warfare suddenly found that their entire framework for a meaningful life had vanished.

Why “nothing”? Didn’t the Crow still live on their lands in Montana? Didn’t women continue to give birth to children and raise them? According to Lear, nothing of significance happened afterward because their lives started to turn around mere survival.^[3] There was no longer any unifying purpose to their daily activities. A fulfilling life had become impossible, even unimaginable. How could anyone raise children in such a world?

From this perspective, it is clear that Plenty Coups’ deepest concern was not just the future, but the very purpose, or telos, of his people’s existence—the question of whether a good life was still possible for the tribe. This is where he proved so essential. Drawing on dreams from his youth, he devoted himself to restoring a radical hope among his people. According to Lear, these dreams were an “act of radical anticipation” that gave Plenty Coups the “imaginative tools with which to endure a conceptual onslaught.”^[4] Through them, he envisioned a rebirth—not just survival, but a new and complete flourishing for his people.

Hope becomes radical. And this in two ways: First, it is “directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is,” a good that is “anticipated” before it can be clearly defined.^[5] Second, it seeks to forge a new Crow identity: “This hope is radical in that it is aiming for a subjectivity that is at once Crow and does not yet exist.”^[6] Here we see the two key elements of radical hope: a vision for a purpose or telos and the virtues needed to achieve it.

Plenty Coups successfully guided his tribe’s transition to an agricultural way of life, generating a new telos and new virtues, especially redefining courage for a new era. His success is thrown into sharp relief when contrasted with the fate of other tribal leaders like Sitting Bull of the Sioux, who, in the hope of changing their situation, supported the Ghost Dance movement that ended in the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Plenty Coups’ approach also stands out against proposals within his own tribe to restore the old order, as some continued their intertribal conflicts on the reservation.

Lear’s study, however, is not just about the Crow. It is a work of narrative philosophy that examines how practical reason is structured and how societies can rebuild their hope and sense of purpose or telos in the face of cultural collapse. Applying his work to our own situation helps us grasp the scale of the devastation we face today.

After the pill, nothing happened. People still marry, have children, and raise them. But the pill introduced a rupture with devastating consequences: the deliberate separation of sex from procreation. This has produced a view of sex untethered from human greatness and reduced to personal preference, calling into question the cultural meaning of sex and its relationship to freedom, love, and family. At stake, in other words, is the very telos or purpose of being men and women. By touching our telos, this rupture also affects our identity and the virtues—or excellences of character—that make a good life possible.

If the virtue of courage lost its meaning for the Crow, for us the virtue of chastity has become a cultural anti-virtue—a supposed vice that hinders the fullness of love.^[7] The excellence of love today is seen as spontaneity and emotional honesty. In this sense, nothing happened culturally or socially with respect to the meaning of family life. On the contrary, a process of fragmentation began, marked by clear stages: the legalization of divorce, then abortion, and finally, same-sex marriage.

The gravity of the situation is not simply that demographic collapse is changing the face of the West. It is that the West no longer has a shared vision of what human fulfillment looks like. Our ideas of freedom, sex, love, and procreation have all been compromised.

2. Fundamental Gratitude

The very idea of gratitude is at stake. The continuity of a society—and what makes it a truly human society—depends on it. Recognizing that life is a gift, that we exist because we were loved into being, and that someone had hope for us before we even existed, shapes who we are. This awareness opens us to recognition, reciprocity, and responsibility.

Seeing life as a gift fosters recognition, because it honors the greatness of those who placed their trust in us. It fosters reciprocity, because the gift flourishes through mutual interdependence. It fosters responsibility, because we flourish in tandem with others. This is not the transactional reciprocity of do ut des (“I give so that you may give”), but an acceptance of the gift that allows it to flourish in our response. We take responsibility for a shared destiny, which is the foundation of friendship.

When it comes to the gift of life, however, direct reciprocity is impossible; what we received from our parents far exceeds anything we could ever do in return. Yet gratitude toward them does not end with simple pietas or sense of devotion. It drives us toward an alternating indirect reciprocity^[8]—doing for others what our parents and teachers did for us, so that the chain of gift-giving can continue. In this way, we reciprocate the gift by paying it forward to our own children—by giving life to them and raising them—and also indirectly to our parents, whom we honor by making them grandparents.^[9] The gift is only fully received and brought to completion when it is passed on to others.^[10]

This gives rise to what we might call “life-giving gratitude”: a way of approaching life, the gifts we receive, and their potential. By breaking the link between the unitive and procreative meaning of the marital act, the pill has damaged our ability to see this link as an expression of generative generosity. In our parents’ union we were conceived, and in our own union we are open to conceiving new life. The pill has us move from life-giving gratitude to selective generation. We choose which acts might bring about a child, turning the child into a “child of desires” and adopting a corresponding approach to education. Spousal love, in itself, is no longer seen as inherently life-giving.

3. The Roots of the Demographic Crisis According to Rémi Brague

To better understand this shift, we can turn to the thought of Rémi Brague.^[11] For him, the demographic crisis stems from a new perception of the world: it is no longer self-evident that it is good to be alive. Whether life is good or bad now seems to depend on circumstances. The consequences are alarming, as this leaves future generations vulnerable, entirely dependent on the present generation’s decision to pass on life. Brague writes, “The future that might open before humanity depends on the willingness of each present generation to reproduce. And it depends on a will that is less and less implicit—or, if you will, more and more conscious and explicit.”^[12]

Across large segments of the population, this will is now a refusal. Collective suicide becomes a thinkable possibility. Why have children? “Do I have the right to impose existence on another?”^[13] As José Granados notes, today Hamlet would not ask, “To be, or not to be” focusing on the present. He would ask about the future: “To have children, or not to have children: that is the question.”^[14]

How, then, can we recover hope in the goodness of generating new life? Pro-natalist policies have failed to reverse demographic decline. The problem is not primarily about external resources but about rediscovering the inner resources for  giving life and seeing how these grow when a child is welcomed.^[15] Hope allows us to see the child as a blessing, which in turn inspires a greater sense of responsibility to pass on the gift of life. Moreover, when we understand not only that having children is good, but that it is part of God’s plan, we can embrace that plan under the care of divine providence.

During the Exile, Israel experienced a cultural devastation even more dramatic than our own. It was in that context that the prophet’s voice came like a light: “Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease” (Jer 29:6). These words restored hope for giving life, linking it not only to the original blessing at creation but also to a future, still unknown, where God’s blessing would continue.

This raises the final question: What radical hope can sustain the choice to bring a child into the world, and what role does God play in it?

III. Radical Hope and Giving Life

To understand the radical hope that stirs a couple to pass on the gift of life, we will first explore the relationship between faith and fertility. Second, we will consider how hope connects our ultimate salvation with our human happiness, or in other words, how hope links the radical future with the present. This will then allow us in a third step to define the specific nature of this radical hope.

1. Faith and Fertility: The Contribution of Philip Jenkins

The historian and sociologist Philip Jenkins has studied the correlation between faith and fertility across the globe.^[16] His conclusion is that “high-fertility” societies correspond to “high-faith” societies, while “low-fertility” societies correspond to “low-faith” ones. This pattern is so consistent that he affirms that “demographic transitions also mark religious transformations—that fertility and faith travel together.”^[17]

Jenkins, however, struggles to explain the precise nature of this correlation—its causes and its direction of causality. The implications are enormous, as the demographic transition is creating “new worlds” and forcing significant changes in both society and religion.

These changes raise the question of “how religious institutions will continue to operate in a low-fertility environment.”^[18] This demands a radical rethinking of strategy, as there is a risk of clinging to models suited for high-fertility settings. For the author, such a mismatch creates a gap between religious teaching and the moral consensus on sexuality, leading to an erosion of believers’ sense of belonging.

His conclusion is clear:

The demographic revolution subverts or makes irrelevant many of the features and activities that religions have long been accustomed to consider essential. As these features disappear, religions of all types are forced to reconsider what their fundamental purpose is, what the core of the issue is. This exercise in rethinking may be long and even painful, but the opportunities it offers are truly rich, and this at a time of special human need.^[19]

This challenge leads Jenkins to conclude that a “reduction of emphasis on sexual issues in moral teaching” is inevitable. He asks, “How could one continue to publicly oppose behaviors or ideas that have been accepted by the majority of current and potential members of the Church?”^[20] It seems, however, that this “rethinking” of the essentials of religion bypasses the root cause of the problem: the lack of motivation to have children. Jenkins, it appears, wants to avoid the risk of proposing a faith that fails to resonate.

But there is another path: exploring a faith capable of generating new hope. Simply affirming the correlation between fertility and faith is not enough. We must ask what kind of faith can inspire a new hope for having children. This approach suggests that to understand the faith-fertility link, we must look at the role of hope.

This is where Lear’s contribution becomes crucial. His analysis of the Crow Nation’s cultural collapse shows that the task is not merely for religion to survive in a hostile society, nor to maintain fertility through individual heroism. The cultural collapse of religion in the West runs deep because the sense of a common purpose (telos) uniting salvation and happiness has been lost, along with the practices that made this common purpose possible. Through his dreams, Plenty Coups understood that the buffalo would not return. Likewise, in our context, it is absurd and nostalgic to adopt Sitting Bull’s solution—expecting cultural change through magical interventions or total confrontation—or to hope to find a protected space in a kind of reservation or ghetto. On this point, Jenkins is right.

What, then, is the real issue? Or, to put it another way, is it possible to offer a radical hope that includes the desire to give life? Such a hope would have to affirm the radical goodness inherent in procreation itself. But what would a hope like that look like?

The answer may be put this way: this hope is the radical hope of procreating children for eternal life. But does this hope offer anything tangible in the here and now, or is it merely deferred to the end times? In other words, is having children an act of human fulfillment that anticipates our final, eschatological destiny, or is it simply a necessary sacrifice required to obtain eternal life?

2. The Radical Future and the Present: Two Visions of Hope

This question leads us to place Lear’s reflections on fruitfulness within the broader Christian discussion of hope, where Protestants and Catholics diverge. The reason lies in their different views on the relationship between the present and the eschaton (the end times). The difference in how justification is understood—as a future promise for Protestants or as a reality already begun for Catholics—shapes two distinct conceptions of hope. The point of contention is whether and how hope, in its striving toward the future, also embraces the present.

As Joseph Ratzinger pointed out years ago, at stake is the relationship between eschatology and happiness.^[21]

a. The Protestant Vision of Hope

Oscar Cullmann’s answer is clear: total fullness is already present in the Risen Christ, but not yet in us. Since it has already happened in Christ, if we believe in him, we can hope that it will also come to pass in us. Cullmann famously captured this idea in a widely influential formula. For him, our present life is lived in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet,” a tension he illustrates with a military metaphor: the time between D-Day and Victory Day.^[22]

Building on this, Jürgen Moltmann sought to clarify the nature of this “intermediate time” between Christ’s resurrection and the future universal resurrection. For Moltmann, hope is not just for the “salvation of the soul, … but also the realization of the eschatological hope of justice, the humanizing of man, the socializing of humanity, peace for all creation.”^[23] Hope transforms the present because it inspires us to act in line with our eschatological ideal. In short, for Moltmann, “Christian hope is messianic expectation in the horizon of eschatological expectation.”^[24]

This is the key to Protestant eschatology: a hope situated in the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” The future awaits us but is not yet anticipated in the present—though our actions must align with that future.

b. The Catholic Vision of Hope

Let us now look at the Catholic vision of hope through the work of two theologians: Benedict XVI and Thomas Aquinas.

In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Benedict XVI seeks to clarify the relationship between the future and the present. Acknowledging that the Bible often uses faith and hope interchangeably, he states:

Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet.” The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future (§ 7).

What is this future that hope brings into our present? It is the life Christ received in the resurrection. With Jesus’ resurrection, “an ontological leap occurred, one that touches being as such, opening up a dimension that affects us all, creating for all of us a new space of life, a new space of being in union with God.”^[25]

This future—our participation in Christ’s risen life—touches our present through the sacraments and transforms us. Thus, hope is not based only on Christ’s resurrection as a past event promising a future, but also on the fact that his resurrection touches and transforms us now. Hope rests on the gift we have already received, one that we await to see come into full flower.

Saint Thomas Aquinas approaches the matter in his reflection on hope, especially in relation to beatitudo imperfecta—imperfect happiness.

In his study, Aquinas first focuses on hope’s affective dynamism, linking it to his theory of love. Hope is born in us from the love we have received and from the dynamism this love generates in us. When we desire a good that is difficult, in the future, yet possible, that desire is transformed into hope. Since love precedes desire,^[26] it must also precede hope. For Aquinas, love is the affective presence of the beloved in the lover, giving desire a concrete, internal goal. But because this is an affective presence and not yet a real one, a tension arises between what is received—the presence—and what is promised—the union.^[27] We can thus understand that hope seeks the flourishing of a love already received.^[28]

But how does hope attain the difficult good it seeks? Aquinas’ answer is striking. He sees two ways: either we rely on our own strength, or we rely on the help of another. In this second case, hope is not directed only toward one object (the good we hope for), but also and simultaneously toward a second: the source of help that sustains hope. This analysis of the “passion” of hope is decisive for his vision of theological hope: “Man hopes to obtain good from God as from a friend” (STh II-II, q. 17, a. 8, ad 2). We can speak of a friend to the extent that we have received charity, which directs us toward something greater. Here the classic image of the two wings of hope comes in: the first wing is the desire for fullness, and the second is trust in God as a friend. With both, we can fly.

His reflection on the desire for fullness is crucial for understanding the link between salvation and happiness. Aquinas distinguishes two aspects of this desire, two “ends”: the finis cuius and the finis quo (STh I-II, q. 1, a. 8). The first is “the end in which we take delight”—that is, God. The second is “the end by which we take delight”—that is, the contemplative act that unites us to him. Thanks to this distinction, he can differentiate between the truth of happiness and its perfection. True happiness is attained when we reach God: it depends on the finis cuius. However, this happiness may be perfect or imperfect, depending on the perfection or imperfection of the act that unites us to him: it depends on the finis quo. The conclusion is clear: true happiness is possible on earth because we can reach God through the theological virtues. But it will be an imperfect happiness, an imperfect enjoyment of union with God, because the act of union is not yet complete.[29]

It thus becomes clear what we hope for: to be perfectly united with God in heaven because we can already be imperfectly united with him on earth. In other words, we hope for a full life on earth that blossoms into a totally fulfilled life in heaven.

c. What Is Christian Hope? Conclusion to a Controversy

This comparison of Protestant and Catholic views on hope leads to an important conclusion. The tension between our present life and our ultimate destiny (eschaton) is not best expressed as one between the “already” and the “not yet,” because we have already received the gift of charity. The tension is better described as one between the “already” and the “still more to come.”^[30] For those living in grace, there is an essential continuity between the present and the radical future. This is due to the ontological priority of love over hope.

3. Which Radical Hope Stirs Us to Pass on the Gift of Life?

a. The Contribution of Lear’s Radical Hope

Lear’s contribution to this debate is not that of giving hope a new root, directing it toward some new “future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is.”[31] The reason is clear: we have already received the gift of charity through the presence of the Holy Spirit. With it comes a sacramental reordering of our being that aligns us with our origin and destiny. The root of our hope is already present and points toward its fulfillment.

Rather, Lear’s contribution is his focus on the radicality of hope as a total and complete hope. It goes to the root of things, requiring the formation of a new, unified purpose (telos) that can incorporate cultural life, and a new, virtuous character in the individual. In this way, our ultimate, eschatological fulfillment is anticipated in excellent cultural practices, made possible by the Christian’s renewed virtuous character. This perspective obliges us to integrate into our understanding of salvation the cultural realities that mediate our telos, thereby uniting our ultimate eschatological salvation with our present human happiness. Unless it is mediated by culture, radical hope is impossible to live or even to understand; our ultimate fulfillment becomes unimaginable. This is precisely what is happening today. Union with God as our final purpose and fulfillment is inconceivable because we lack the mediating experience of a human union that is fulfilling. Unless we understand the una caro—the union of man and woman in one flesh—as a real form of human fulfillment, we cannot grasp what union with God means. No tangible experience will bring this notion close to us, and hence it will lack appeal. Lear raises the crucial issue of our need for a unified telos—a cultural conception of human fulfillment in God that is anticipated here and now. And his treatise also makes us wonder whether the virtues of character have anything to do with this fulfillment.

b. Radical Hope and Procreation

Following these reflections, we can see that the radical hope of parents who have begotten and born children for eternal life also embraces the present: eternal life is anticipated in family life. This is how future fulfillment (eschatology) and present happiness unite in the Christian approach to procreation. Let us look at two key elements:

First, the Bible connects procreation to eternal life. Like the mother of the Maccabees, parents with radical hope can say:

I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again (2 Macc 7:22–23).

According to Aquinas, God’s purpose in creating human beings as male and female was to bring forth “a multitude of individuals” who could enjoy eternal glory (STh I, q. 98, a. 1). Through their marital union in the flesh, spouses share in God’s intention and thus beget and bear children for eternal life. This life means entering fully into the Body of Christ, becoming one with him, and plunging into the current of love between the Father and the Son, which is the Holy Spirit.

Second, this eternal life is anticipated in family life. It is anticipated first in the spouses themselves. Created in God’s image, they engage in the act that most resembles the Creator’s: procreation through the mutual gift of self. In this gift, they participate in Christ’s own self-giving for his Church that is enacted on the cross and consummated in the heavenly union of Christ and the Church as one flesh. As they bring forth new life in their union, they also share in the fruitfulness of the Father, who creates a new being loved for its own sake and destined for eternity. Furthermore, all the richness, complexity, and fragility of family life anticipates eternal life, allowing parents and children to participate in the communion of saints through the charity they receive in the sacraments. Our ultimate, heavenly destiny is anticipated in spousal love, in the procreation and education of children, and in the way family members live with and for each other. They live between the “already” and the “still more to come.”

c. How Is Such an Anticipation Possible?

The ability to live this way is not merely a matter of a couple’s decision, as if their actions alone had such power. To bring children into the world for eternal life and to make that life present here and now is far greater than what human beings can achieve on their own.

Nor does living in the anticipation between the “already” and the “still more to come” simply depend on how people spend the time between the Lord’s resurrection and our own—perhaps dedicating themselves to a cause (such as fecundity) or following a moral code. Any such cause would remain external to their actual lives and, as Philip Jenkins rightly observes, would ultimately wear them down. This is where Moltmann’s proposal regarding this “in-between time” runs into a problem: the ideal of salvation remains separate from the reality of human life.

Instead, the spouses’ life is about nurturing the gift they received in their human love, consecrated in marriage. This gift matures when human freedom, embraced by grace, is engaged. This gift matures not like a plant, but like a child—through contact and reciprocal interaction with its mother. As Aquinas reminds us, if the object of our hope is beyond our strength, we can still reach it with the help of a friend. This is how the theological hope of having children for eternal life becomes possible: through the companionship of Christ in the Church. To have a child then means wanting that child to be born into the eternal life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This new life begins with baptism, where the parents’ procreative act gains new power and unity.

Hope thus moves toward eternal life by embracing the mediation of the sacraments. Because hope has two wings, it can both desire eternal life and confidently lean on a friend. It desires an eternal life that breaks in like the dawn when we accept God’s word on the greatness of procreation; it leans on the help of Christ in the Church, which sustains the spouses’ love and generates new inner strength. Thanks to this trust, a husband and wife can overcome the fears that come with the radical newness of bringing a child into the world.

So we see that spousal love—total, open to life, and sustained by grace in the Church—is what lends life its greatness and beauty. It defines happiness as human fulfillment and, through radical hope, connects it to eternal life.

d. Giving Hope a Cultural Form: The Role of Poets

Because this hope concerns our ultimate goal or purpose, our telos, and because humans are “cultural animals,”^[32] it must take a specific cultural form in each society. This means that imagining our telos in the wake of cultural devastation requires a new kind of imagination. As we have seen, the sacraments play a key role by drawing a Christian’s very being into the relational life of Christ, reorienting it according to the coordinates of creation and eschatology. But this dimension is not enough; on its own, it might bypass the cultural realities that mediate our human telos and give it its concrete shape.

In our case, the challenge is to reimagine the greatness of bringing new life into the world. We must imagine it culturally, through new vehicles of meaning. For that, we need poets. Only then can our imagination reach its full potential, because it taps into the deep wellspring of meaning that is the very foundation of culture. Poets are “creators of meaningful spaces… that offer new possibilities.”^[33] Through them, we see the symbolic value of the realities of human life—a value centered not on mere survival, but on the pursuit of an excellent life.

So, which poets of our time could help us recapture the greatness of bringing a child into the world? I would suggest Greta Gerwig and her film Barbie. While it has some limits, the movie powerfully frames motherhood as a path to human fulfillment. It draws from Pinocchio—the story of a puppet who becomes a real boy, a parable for the challenges of growing up. At first glance, Barbie seems to be about a doll that becomes a girl. But in reality, it is about a girl becoming a woman, a challenge made more difficult today when the very meaning of womanhood is unclear.

The film offers a stunning answer. In a dreamlike sequence, Barbie converses with her creator, Ruth, while the Oscar-winning song “What Was I Made For?” plays over a montage of real women with their children. The very next scene shows Barbie sitting in a car, approaching the entrance of a building. When she enters, a receptionist asks how she can help. Barbie smiles and says, “I’m here to see my gynecologist.” Here, then, the answer emerges: a woman is one who wants to be a mother. If the Barbie doll dismantled the idea of motherhood for generations of girls, then the Barbie film puts it right back on the table—not as an inevitability, but as a possibility for fulfillment that is understood, desired, and chosen.

III. Creative Minorities, Procreation, and the Transformation of Society

In his analysis, Philip Jenkins notes that just as the demographic shift began in Europe, the pioneers of a new path can also be found there. Indeed, European churches can no longer count on the devotion and sympathy of the masses and must instead “focus on the role of creative minorities. Churches have to relearn operating as minority communities within a predominantly nonreligious environment.”^[34] These communities can then act as leaven in society. Jenkins cites Benedict XVI on this point. However, while Jenkins connects these creative minorities to the future of religion, a proper grasp of Benedict XVI’s original idea allows us better to appreciate the role of those minorities who choose to have children, sparking new hope in the Church and society.

Benedict XVI first raised the theme of creative minorities in response to a journalist’s question during his visit to the largely secular Czech Republic.^[35] The Pope stressed that what matters is not the Church’s prominence in a given society, but its ability to be a creative minority. He was alluding to a famous debate between the historians Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee on the decline of the West.^[36]

Spengler argued that the decline was an unstoppable natural law, viewing society as an organism that is born, grows, reproduces, decays, and dies. Toynbee agreed that society is like an organism but rejected the idea that decline is inevitable. He believed that in times of crisis, creative minorities could offer new solutions, reversing the tide of decay and sparking a renaissance. In our case, the question is, “To have children, or not to have children?”

Lear would agree with Toynbee’s view but take it a step further by embracing Brague’s idea that the solution must address our ultimate purpose—our telos—providing a vision of existence itself. It cannot be a partial response to a social problem. The answer must address why bringing a child into the world makes life truly human and beautiful—why our purpose, our human telos, is at stake in the act of procreation.

Families who live with the radical hope of begetting and bearing children for eternal life—and who anticipate this life in the complexities and precariousness of their existence—provide a clear answer. What makes life good and beautiful is a way of loving and welcoming each other that is a foretaste of eternal life. This way of life is shaped by a profound gratitude: gratitude to the Creator for the gift of life; gratitude to our parents for seeing our existence as a good even before we were born, and gratitude to Christ for communicating his Spirit and sharing his own spousal love in the Eucharist. The spouses’ total self-giving love participates in Christ’s own gift made present in the Eucharist (“This is my body given for you”). Spouses who live this love, moved by Christ dwelling within them, become these creative minorities. They are capable not only of reversing the collapse in birth rates but, more importantly, of generating true sociality.

“Sociality” refers to the quality of a society’s human bonds, based on accepting differences for the sake of the common good. As Stefano Fontana puts it, “sociality is the glue that holds together the members of a society.”^[37] This acceptance is based on a fundamental gratitude—a recognition that the life we received is a radical good and that it would therefore be a good also for those who might receive it from us. This, in turn, sparks the desire to pass on that life by having and raising children.^[38] As Hannah Arendt suggested, this is how true novelty enters the world.^[39] Gratitude, birth, and new beginnings go hand in hand.

This life-giving gratitude forms the basis of a humane society. Families open to life contribute to it not by making a single, difficult decision, but by embracing a whole way of life that also affects the spouses’ conjugal life by keeping the unitive and procreative dimensions of their love together. This way of life shapes their family’s character, keeping them open and eager to share with other families the interior richness they have received. A society’s social capital is built on this human quality. Thus, marriage open to life is at the foundation of society because it generates a truly human space.^[40] The future of the Church and society, then, lies with families who join a “high faith” with a “radical hope.”

Conclusion

It is true: fertility and faith go hand in hand. However, not just any faith inspires people to have children. It takes a faith that holds within it the radical hope of betting and bearing children for eternal life, while offering a foretaste of that life in the family here and now.

In other words, it is a hope that embraces both our ultimate salvation and our present happiness, offering a unified purpose (telos) and the virtuous character needed to achieve it. A hope like this can withstand the cultural wasteland left by demographic and religious decline. This is the hope that offers a new beginning.

The communities that embody this radical hope become creative minorities, acting as leaven in a decaying society and in the Church at large. If, with its impact on the faith, the demographic crisis forces us to rethink the core of the Christian message, then this rethinking must address what it truly means to offer radical hope to the faithful and to build a community where that hope can flourish. This is where our future lies.

[1] J. Lear, Radical Hope. Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). I summarize here what I explained in the article: “What Kind of Hope Allows Us to Face Cultural Devastation? A Dialogue with Jonathan Lear,” which will appear soon. A more complete exposition of what will be seen later about the controversy over Christian hope can also be found there.

[2] Lear, Radical Hope, 2.

[3] Lear, Radical Hope, 57.

[4] Lear, Radical Hope, 77-78.

[5] Lear, Radical Hope, 103.

[6] Lear, Radical Hope, 104.

[7] See S. Blackburn, Lust (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

[8] See M. Hénaff, “Le lien entre générations et la dette du temps,” in Esprit 443 (2018) 48: “La « Réciprocité alternative indirecte », est capable de rendre réversible le temps irréversible. Concept paradoxal dans la mesure où le don en retour à ceux qui précèdent se fait en faveur de ceux qui viennent. Comme si chacun répliquait à la génération antérieure en la reconnaissant dans la génération suivante”. I am grateful to Prof. Stephan Kampowski for pointing out this and the following citation to me.

[9] See. J.T. Godbout, The World of the Gift (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998), 47: “But to have children is also to give back what one has received from one’s parents, and it is the most beautiful gift one can offer them: to ‘make them’ grandparents. It’s not really an exception to the rule of circularity for the gift”.

[10] J. Granados, Una sola carne en un solo Espíritu. Teología del matrimonio (Madrid: Palabra, 2014), 89.

[11] R. Brague, Las anclas en el cielo. La infraestructura metafísica de la vida humana (Madrid: Encuentro, 2022).

[12] Brague, Las anclas, 79.

[13] Brague, Las anclas, 91.

[14] J. Granados, La esperanza. Del futuro al fruto (Madrid: Didaskalos, 2024), 10.

[15] See the important contribution of C.R. Pakaluk, Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2024).

[16] Ph. Jenkins, Fertility and Faith. The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2020).

[17] Jenkins, Fertility and Faith, 12.

[18] Jenkins, Fertility and Faith, 191.

[19] Jenkins, Fertility and Faith, 199.

[20] Jenkins, Fertility and Faith, 197.

[21] J. Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988) 13-15.

[22] O. Cullmann, Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Concept of Time and History (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1950), 81-84.

[23] J. Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 329.

[24] J. Moltmann, “Christian Hope: Messianic or Transcendent? A Theological Discussion with Joachim of Fiore and Thomas Aquinas”: Horizons 12 (1985), 348.

[25] J. Ratzinger – Benedict XVI. Jesus of Nazareth. Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011), 274.

[26] Cfr. L. Melina, Cristo e il dinamismo dell’agire. Linee di rinnovamento della Teologia Morale Fondamentale (Rome: Mursia, 2001), 19-35.

[27] Cfr. J. J. Pérez-Soba, El amor: introducción a un misterio (Madrid: Biblioteca Autores Cristianos, 2011), 47-57.

[28] G. Abbà, Le Virtù per la Felicità (Roma: LAS, 2018), 213: “Speranza che il dono inizialmente ricevuto possa essere portato a compimento mediante l’azione propria in cooperazione con l’azione altrui.”

[29] Cfr. C. Mendiola, Sperat ut ab amico: la virtud de la esperanza y la acción moral en Santo Tomás de Aquino (Madrid: Didaskalos, 2018), 95-98: See the decisive text in Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 5, a. 3, ad 2: “The imperfection of participated happiness is due to one of two causes. First, on the part of the object of happiness, which is not seen in Its Essence: and this imperfection destroys the nature of true happiness. Secondly, the imperfection may be on the part of the participator, who indeed attains the object of happiness, in itself, namely, God: imperfectly, however, in comparison with the way in which God enjoys Himself. This imperfection does not destroy the true nature of happiness; because, since happiness is an operation, the true nature of happiness is taken from the object, which specifies the act, and not from the subject.”

[30] For a more detailed explanation of this, see J. Granados – J. Noriega, La Esperanza: Ancla y Estrella. En torno a la encíclica Spe Salvi (Burgos: Monte Carmelo, 2008).

[31] Lear, Radical Hope, 103.

[32] Lear, Radical Hope, 6.

[33] Lear, Radical Hope, 51.

[34] Jenkins, Fertility and Faith, 192.

[35] https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2009/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20090926_interview.html

[36] See a summary of the positions in: L. Granados – I. de Ribera, Minorías Creativas: El Fermento del Cristianismo, (Burgos: Monte Carmelo, 2011).

[37] S. Fontana, “Matrimonio, procreazione e società. L’Humanae vitae come enciclica sociale,” Bolletino di Dottrina Sociale della Chiesa 13 (2017), 136.

[38] Brague, Las anclas, 104: “Para que la humanidad siga existiendo es preciso que los hombre se basen en la idea, explícita o implícita, de que la vida es un bien. Debe serlo no solo para los que la dan, sino decididamente también para los que la reciben”.

[39] H. Arendt, The Life of the Mind. Willing, (London: Secker & Warburg, 1978), 100-101.

[40] See Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, n. 15.