Cafeteria catholicism and the spirituality of obedience
This is an essay on the ideal of the spirituality of obedience. This, I believe, is primarily a Catholic thing in Christianity, although it is also found in Buddhism and in Hinduism (at least, in the spiritual aspects of yoga instruction). I'd be interested in protestant members commenting on whether this idea exists as a valued part of
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And lets not forget the question of trust. "The first part is that the practice is based on trust." Priests who touch boys shatters my trust. Priests who hide priests who touch boys grind my trust to powder. Priests who teach boys in school but make no efforts to explain the corrupt and vile practices of their history (indulgences, hoarding wealth, etc) blow that trust to the winds. And lets not forget that the malicious lens of the media vilify so much my desire to trust any stranger is already wasted and passed out in the alley. And based on my experiences, the church is a stranger to me.
Neal, what you say was said eloquently and makes sense, but I cannot get past the prerequisites. Trust, education, and desire. I have trust issues. I posit that most American catholics have education and desire issues. And as long as the church accepts them as they are, they will stay in the cafeteria line, eating the bland foods they know, picking their beliefs as they understand them, and obeying mindlessly the word of the lord.
BTW: I am very pleased with these discussions. I have moved from relative apathy to active questioning. And I really respect those of you who ponder these issues and consider their impact on your lives.
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Thus, while I can say that trust is an important component from outside--meaning, the leadership should inspire trust so as to make this path easier and bring more people to it--the true measure of this path is your ability to extend your trust out further to take more risks. Not foolishly, without realizing the risks, but acknowledging them and believing they are appropriate to take.
I think the middle ground between accepting everything God gives and being cautions and calculating is listening for the voice of the Spirit to guide you in who God wants you to listen to at any point.
So, in talking about a trend that inspires people to trust less--I completely agree and I really think we should actively work to reverse this. But to say that abusive priests and media portrayals make you unable to trust is to say that you choose not to follow this path--but it is always a choice, and you can choose to trust at any time. Again, that choice cannot be ignoring your history and experiences, but embracing them.
Finally, as with Jesus' divinity, I'm not sure the benefits of the path of obedience are completely clear from outside of the path. I'm not sure I could convince someone to engage in the vulnerability of obedience if they approached it from a position of skepticism--because really, although I've outlined the benefits, I'll wager they are far from convincing to an outsider.
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LINE 1 - Gullable mindless fanaticism vs. intellectual faith. When is trust a matter of faith and when is trust a matter of being abused by an authority figure. Cathothilicism vs cultism. It is true that in your faith set-up you accept what has happened in life as God's greater purpose - including being duped into a cult. But then you are riding...
LINE 2 - excuse-ism vs true faith or the "Its what God wanted" excuse. How easy is it to hide behind the wall of excuses. I know the Church does not want that. How many "It's God's will" statements I have to toss out to my victims because I made excuses for my terrible, hurtful actions?
--"But to say that abusive priests and media portrayals make you unable to trust is to say that you choose not to follow this path--but it is always a choice, and you can choose to trust at any time. Again, that choice cannot be ignoring your history and experiences, but embracing them."
You are absolutely correct. I will not use bad priests and media blitz as an excuse not to trust. I am smarter than that, I know. But when I am at my vulnerable, when I do open myself to spiritual trust (a rare event), I devine my own personal faith - one that is not christian. It feels like your above statement is trying to impress the idea that when you open up to faith and trust the Christian answer is the way you will feel. And if I open up and trust a mentor, will he or she not simply try to guide me down the path of their religion rather than present me a series of options much like a cafeteria (Ohh! Back to the theme!!) does this not just make them a recruiter rather than a guide?
And thus we come to the problem - if I trust and God is my guide, and I beleive in something contradictory to your beliefs, is one of us cosmically wrong? Can we both be right, if one believes Jesus is devine and the other not?
Is faith really personal or should there be objective criteria for a Religion!??! What does the pope say?
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Wow, that was low. But it was so easy. . .
Yes, I'm going to hell. But I'll make a more thoughtful response later. :)
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This may seem like a flimsy way to answer important questions, but it's inevitable because we are limited beings. I think it's a greater mistake to say "I will learn everything I can and eventually figure out all the answers myself" than to say "I'm just going to have to take their word for it." It's the difference between hubris and humility.
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My spiritual director tells me that for the good of their souls I need to kill all my family. I do so. Clearly, my spiritual director bears some moral responsibility. But we clearly wouldn't say that I have no responsibility because I was obeying him. I think everyone would have expected me to examine that instruction. But if I am on the extreme end of the spiritual practice of obedience, wouldn't it be clear I should just go and kill them even if I disagree?
So, clearly, we expect people to maintain some degree of oversight over their authorities even when they are practicing obedience. But how do you practice unmitigated obedience and still ensure that you are not being led down a path of evil by a corrupt authority?
I think the first thing to say is that corrupt authority, particularly in the church, is less common than is popularly believed. I have little factual support for this, but I think despite scandals of abuse, a lack of transparency, and a reluctance to offer accountability to lay people, the authorities of the church are good-hearted and not fundamentally evil. In that case, we may differ over details but we are not going to be fundamentally led into an evil path.
Further, I think you need to understand that you cannot expect specific instruction about your life to come from those who do not know you. Certainly, you can look to them for general guidelines which can be interpreted, but if you want to practice obedience it should be to someone you have a relationship with who can help you to interpret these guidelines in your own situation. It is very easy to take these guidelines and apply them inappropriately--I think we can all come up with examples of people who heard something a distant authority said and took it in completely the wrong direction. The way to avoid that is to stay in touch with someone locally who can help you interpret these ideas and offer unique points about your own situation that might not be available from a less personal source.
OK, but still, you can fall under the influence of evil people. Dr. D touched on this, but I think this is important: your human authority is only a stand-in for the only true authority in your life, which is God. If your obedience is making you uncomfortable, you need to pray on it and let the Spirit speak to you on it. Find another authority, if the authority you have is making you clearly move away from what you consider to be the path God wants you to follow. Or perhaps the path of obedience isn't something that works for you in general.
I think that obedience can be taken in a problematic way. Not eating until you are gravely ill is not fasting--it's an illness. Fasting is meant to bring you to compassion with the poor, not destroy the body God gave you. If you've tried to use fasting, and it's not accomplishing this, there are other practices or modifications to the practice (if, say, you're diabetic) that are appropriate, because fasting isn't a good in itself.
So in the same way, obedience is a practice that must be undertaken with the right heart. If, in your situation, you try obedience and you can't make it work, there are alternatives. Certainly, in my life, I moved away from a specific community where I found it difficult to follow that authority and maintain my fundamental ideas about my wife's beliefs. I don't believe I could have followed obedience to that authority and been married to my wife. Ergo, I had a choice to make, and I made it, and found a new authority, because I recognized that what I was being told was not simply surprising, annoying, or uncomfortable--it was a fundamental break with my conscience and my relationship wtih God and my family.
Still, I want to emphasize that this decision is not trivial or something you do on a whim or a mood. It is better by far to remain where you are than to move unless the situation is critical.
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Maybe I am way off base, to embittered by my past experiences and observations to see a Church that tries to teach it's followers. And I do accept that faith can and indeed does exist without understanding, for who can understand the unknowable. And perhaps religion is more than an institution designed to puzzle out the evidence left by God, to discern his plan. Perhaps it is community, comfort, acceptance without tests or exams, the hum of peaceful ritual, a poilitical force, a place for coffee and doughnuts, a place of contemplation. If so than it is terrestrial and I have seen what it has to offer me, and I dont belong.
I still have faith - one that I have picked from the cafeteria of God. From the cafeteria because I lack bricks, in part because faith is a choice, in part because I beleive. And I am not Christian because I do not obey because I do not trust.
I cannot figure it out on my own - I am not hubristic. But neither do I take their word for it.
Religion is all about trust. Huh.
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I mean, if you want to get involved in serious discussion (just as a hypothetical, but the invitation is there if you actually wanted it) Rhonda and I participate in what is called a basic christian community (bcc) where we discuss spiritual and religious issues. Participants include a psychologist, two theology teachers, a guy name Kevin who went to Regis HS with your brother, and a technical writer turned masseuse.
Anyway, that's just an example--I don't really expect you to show up. (Although, again, if you're interested, you're welcome to show up March 13 at 5:30pm in Denver as is anyone else--let me know if you want directions via email, although I can't promise to be there as who knows what my schedule will be.) But what would you want to see that would provide these bricks that isn't already available?
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These are exactly the type of brick making classes that I think are needed by the Church. But they will ultametly fall short of educating the masses because our nation does not back these classes. The USA is in a tough spot - one where I dont see a clear solution. We want the seperation of Church and state because while we are a deeply religious nation, we are not of one religion, nor do we persecute athiests or agnostics. We have traded opportunity for religous growth for freedom.
Imagine a world where you worked 6 hours a day, and did religious study 2 hours a day? Or did the usual workday but were granted a 1 week religous study break every quarter if you wanted to take it. Instead we work 60 hours a week, and complain about Mass because "its the same every week" if the priest is booring, or "I want to sleep in" or "Ill miss the game".
Not to be too over the top here, but religion has to sell itself these days because Satan is selling everything else. There is a new god boys and girls, called the 'dollah bill' and it has a much bigger congregation.
What you present Neal is great, and I thank you for the invetation. I wish more catholics participated in something like that. It just seems like such a small salvo in a big war. What can the Church do? Damn good question.
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I think this is an important insight. Where does this trust come from? Like any relationship of trust, it requires a certain leap; we never know absolutely that those we trust won't betray us. I would bet that for most people throughout the ages, the main avenue of trust in a particular religion was family. "My grandparents were Catholic, and they ended up as good, happy people. Good enough for me." At least as a start. These days, I think we have a cultural predisposition against those kinds of judgments. Generations distrust each other; they are defined more by their differences than their connections; the generational model in our minds is revolution, not tradition.
One thing that occurs to me in thinking about how the Church educates is that there's a kind of vicious cycle that has occured in the last, say, fifty years. And maybe something similar to it occured in the more distant past as well. What happens, it seems to me, is that there are certain doctrines that congregations don't like to hear much about. This is understandable and inevitable. These days, I think congregations don't like to hear about, say, the exclusivity of their religion (and all organized religions are exclusive to some degree). This puts priests and educators in a funny position. They want the religion to be appealing, and of course they want people to keep coming to church or to keep attending classes. So they deemphasize the out-of-vogue messages and focus on something nicer.
Unfortunately, all this does is foster the impression that the religion is something it's not. In general, it would be better for the spiritual life of the congregation to have homilists and educators challenge these preconceptions directly and immediately. Not because the Truth has to be forced into those who don't want to hear it, but because if that isn't done, then dialogue on the topic never even happens.
Plus, all sorts of ugly things happen when a doctrine is ignored until the church is desperate to clarify it. The Catholic Church in America has been terrible about explaining that you're not supposed to go to communion if you're in a state of serious sin. I bet plenty of Catholics were shocked to hear bishops calling for John Kerry to not receive communion, whatever their political proclivities, because they hadn't the first clue that the same statement might apply to them (probably not for voting pro-abortion, but there are plenty of other serious sins out there being committed). This created the appearance, even within the Church, that bishops were really motivated by pure politics. Why else would they mention this doctrine out of the blue at that particular time? If I always had a rule about letting tall people ride shotgun in my car, but only actually brought it up when a leggy supermodel asked for a ride (even if what I really wanted to do was just be nice to a stranger), what would you think my motivation behind the rule was? More damage might be done by bishops appeasing their congregations' sensibilities than by proclaiming the unconfortable facts of the faith.
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I think I've told this story 1000 times, so here's number 1001. When I was first at the writing grad school program, the head of the department made a speech. In that speech, she said something like, "You are all writers. You all have important things to say. We are here to give you the tools to say them well, and have them be heard."
I thought, "Oh crap. I don't have anything important to say. I'm not really a writer. Apparantly, all these other folks have something important to say. Well, they don't know it from looking at me. I'll just pretend that I already know what I'm doing, that I have important stuff to say, and that I'm very confident in my abilities."
Time passed. One day, a year later, the head of the department gave the same speech. And I realized, "You know, I've pretended to be a writer for so long, I think I know what it means to be a writer. I think I have an idea how someone does this. I think I am comfortable with that label."
I realized at that point that whenever you want to become something, you always start out at some point by pretending to be that thing. You do the things that you think those people would do. You talk to people who you feel already live that life or do that thing, and see what they do. And eventually, you figure it out. But if you wait first to understand it before jumping in and pretending, you'll never get there. Because lifestyles are like languages, and require immersion to achieve true fluency.
So, with religion, there are countless people who go to mass because they should; because that's what religious people do, and they want to be religious people. They don't understand why, or maybe even exactly how. They may be pretending to be religious for most of their lives. But one day, all the accumulated stuff will suddenly click for them, and they will realize that they understand why the mass is important. They understand why someone would think God exists. They understand what they should do in their lives because of that belief. And the recognize that what they've been doing has been pretty close to that, so they already have the habit.
The people who don't understand are given a few more intellectual tools every Sunday. Perhaps they go through the motions today, but there is no way for them to do more without developing the habit first. Some might be, like St. Paul, knocked off their horse with conversion on a road somewhere. But I think for most of us that conversion happens gradually, over the course of a lifetime of pretending.
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