Jesuits

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About the Jesuits

 

Five hundred years after the birth of lgnatius Loyola, and four hundred and fifty years after he founded the Jesuit Order, Jesuits around the world are celebrating - amid tension, challenge and change

 

THE MYTH OF THE JESUITS

 

 

The Jesuits, from the beginning, have been targets of suspicion. 'The Society of Jesus', said Napoleon, 'is the most dangerous of Orders, and has done more mischief than all the others.' Thomas Jefferson was still more forceful: 'If any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth and in hell. it is the Company of Loyola.' And Lord Macaulay, while impressed by the heroism, tenacity and dedication of some Jesuits, alluded to their 'unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means.' One glimpses here, the old charge that for Jesuits 'end justifies the means'. Jesuits are required, in fact, to 'obey their superior in all things - sin alone expected'. The exception is crucial.

 

THE REALITY OF IGNATIUS

 

 

lgnatius Loyoia was a visionary, and animator of others, and in the latter part of his life a busy organiser and letter-writer. He valued friends within the church and outside it, including women friends, very highly. The last of twelve children, Inigo de Loyola was born into a noble but impoverished family. As a young military officer, he found himself defending a fort at Pamplona, in the Basque country of north-western Spain, The defence continued till well after a surrender should have been negotiated, because Inigo refused to quit. The reward for his foolhardy courage was a right leg shattered by a cannon ball. As the almost legendary story has it, the army doctor failed to set the leg correctly. A section of bone protruded. The leg had to be re-set, without anaesthetic. Inigo was taken back to the old family manor to convalesce over many months.

 

Bored, he asked for some novels to read, but the only books available were a few romances, a life of Christ and some lives of saints. According to his Autobiography, Inigo discovered that when he read tales of chivalry the excitement was immediate, but what followed were hours of restlessness. On the other hand, when he read the religious books the immediate effect was minor, but the after-effects were profound contentment. Giving attention to these shifts of mood, and repeating the experiment from day to day, he began to trust his own "inner movements". He also began to believe that they offered guidance about the directions his life should now take. In fact, he came to interpret these changes within as signs of divine guidance.

 

At the same time, lnigo was beginning to feel an attraction and admiration towards the figure of Jesus Christ, a sense of personal closeness that would stay with him the rest of his life.. In search of Christ, lgnatius (the new name he adopted) first became a pilgrim, living for a time in a cave near Manresa. He prayed for long hours, and found his vision becoming simplified and energised. After his spiritual apprenticeship, he abandoned austerities and set out, now a man in his mid-thirties, to gain an education. This meant going to the local school and studying alongside teenagers. After mastering the basics of Latin, the ex-nobleman and ex-officer departed for the University of Paris, begging for meals along the way. In Paris he studied with tenacity and spiritual fervour - needing both, because he was no natural student.

 

LOVE OF CHRIST - AND THE CHURCH

 

 

At university, lgnatius gathered a group of friends who he sensed were ready for a major challenge. Their life in common was simple and prayerful. Together they planned to go one day as pilgrims to Jerusalem, to visit the scenes of Christ's life. Frustrated in the plans, since the Moors remained firmly in charge of Palestine and no sea-captain would take the companions there, they decided instead to band together more closely - and prepare for possible dispersion through the countries of Europe. lgnatius would go to Rome and ask the Pope what service his group could offer the Church. By this time their group spirit was clear: maintaining the tension between close companionship and flexibility to go on mission was to be the mainspring of their new religious order. The group hoped to respond quickly to the needs of the New World, the excitement and challenge of new learning, and the ferment that the Reformation was causing within the church.

 

Ignatius' theory - his theology - was typical of his own day rather than original. It was nothing if not strongly incarnational, based on the conviction that the Church is the extension of Christ's life and presence through time and space. On this reckoning, those who love Christ must also love and serve His Church, despite its human weakness, frailty and corruption. Loyola knew several popes to be unworthy of their office, but he could also see beyond them in the divine spark within the Church. Least worthy, perhaps was Leo X: 'God has given us the papacy. let's enjoy it!,. Leo did so, to the scandal of the world. In his attitude to the popes of his day, lgnatius combined a strong conviction about what ought to be, with realism about the world as it is.

 

Loyola bad a gift for dealing with people emphathetically, spotting their talent and finding ways to motivate them in God's service. His most notablerecruit to the Jesuit Order was Francis Xavier, a brilliant young scholar and athlete whom he met at the University of Paris. Xavier, highly ambitious at the time, at first ridiculed lgnatius' spiritual vision - especially with regard to himself. Later Xavier was to carry that ambition they shared to India, the Dutch East lndies, Japan and to the door of China. Revealing a gift for languages, he preached to hundreds at a time, offered inspiration, baptised and moved on. His work, particularly in India, has lasted. He reported the progress of his mission to Loyola in an extensive correspondence, and received replies months later. As their exchange of letters shows, distance did nothing to diminish their rapport. Novelist Evelyn Waugh wrote of the younger man, 'Xavier was preeminent in daring and endurance. In him renaissance exhuberance coexisted with medieval faith.'

Another notable recruit was Francis Borgia, Duke of Candia and friend to the Emperor. The Borgia backgrnund was famous, and infamous, including lucretia and Cesare Borgia, and the not-so-worthy Pope Alexander VI Francis, by contrast, was a man of lofty standards. When he complained to loyola about certain personalities, the latter replied, 'Francis, we are called upon to mould not gold, but clay.' Borgia later became the third superior general of the order.

 

THE SPIRITUALITY OF IGNATIUS LOYOLA

 

'Spirituality', in a Jesuit context, is a complex word. it is used to describe the process of adapting the gospel to a particular time and place, especially when this is done in an inspirational and memorable way. The French Jesuit historian jean de Guibert summed up lgnatian spirituality in a succinct phrase: 'service of Christ our leader, the one who is loved passionately'. lgnatius passionately longed to be wholehearted, and to prepare others to be so. The constant refrain in his most famous work, The Spiritual Exercises, is 'What have I done for Christ, what am I doing for Christ, what shall I do for Christ?'. In response, Loyola himself prays:

Lord, teach me to be generous.

Teach me to serve You as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost..

 

THE JESUITS AND CONTROVERSY

 

 

Jesuits undergo a long spiritual and intellectual formation, generally about twelve years in all, including arts, sciences, philosophy and theology - as well as field-work in education or social involvement. One cannot pretend that all Jesuits have been outstanding: most have been average men who have worked hard. But there have been a core of brilliant and original priests and brothers who showed courage and vision, sometimes well ahead of their time. As in every

organisation, there have also been small 'safe' men of limited vision, who have found their more controversial brethren difficult to identify with.

 

There was the China experiment. In the 16th century, Matteo Ricci was sent there on a virtual 'mission impossible', given that China was closed to most Westerners. Ricci was a gifted mathematician and scholar, and also a man of charm and tact. He managed to penetrate not only China but also the circle of friends around the Emperor, becoming something of mentor to him as well as an instructor in Western science. The Emperor became favourably disposed toward Christianity. Ricci, meanwhile, worked at adapting church practice to Chinese customs and ways of thought, a strategy that may have led to the Christian faith spreading through China. Rome, alas, ruled against his vision and strategy- A potentially fascinating missionary experiment was cut short. Two hundred years later, adaptation to cultures was seen to be not only wise but necessary.

 

In our own century, Pierre Teiihard de Chardin (who also worked in China) found himself silenced by superiors and living under a cloud for many years. He and his remarkable books, including The Phenomenon of Man and The Divine Milieu, have now been exonerated. In the meantime, Teiihard's daring thought was influential in preparing the Catholic Church for the Second Vatican Council. Suspicion surrounding him also fell on the German Augustin Bea, Frenchman Henri de Lubac, Austrian Kari Rahner and the American John Courtenay Murray. Yet all these Jesuits were engaged as experts (periti) at the Council, advising bishops and helping draft documents. All have continued to be formative influences in mainstream Catholic thinking and action since the Vatican Council.

 

Jesuits, especially those who are priests (some are brothers), are forbidden both by the Church and by their own rule from taking part in politics as such. But at times politics can impinge on moral issues, and today massive problems of injustice, especially in the Third World, call for priestly zeal, compassion and love. Last year, five Jesuits were murdered in El Salvador. Why? Because as members of a university community they had championed the rights of oppressed people. Many others have been imprisoned or expelled for similar reasons from countries where they once worked. lgnatius Loyola wanted his men to be equally at home among the poor and among the leaders of society. It is his inspiration, and the spirituality he articulated and taught, that motivates them even now.

 

JESUITS OF THE FUTURE

 

 

John Henry Newman, the English Cardinal whose centenary was celebrated in 1991, is well known for his obervation that 'to grow is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often'. In loyola's cosmic vision, Jesuits had to be ready to adapt themselves to their environment — always in the service of the gospel. In a quickly changing world, spiritual realism and courage are needed more than ever, together with imagina ' lien and vision. It is easy to stagnate in the methods and techniques of the past.

 

The present superior general of the Jesuits is Peter-Hans Koivenbach, a Dutch-born linguist who visited Australia in 1989. Much of his working life was spent in the Middle East, with a base in Beirut. Rising early for Mass, often in the Armenian rite, he is engaged most days (as was lgnatius) in tasks concerned with the deployment of his men, as well as conferring with advisers and in letter-writing. Kolvenbach has overall direction of some 25,000 Jesuits worldwide, working in universities, colleges, social programmes, parishes, missions and refugee work. They engage with almost every stratum of society in the countries where they work.

 

Exchanges of letters continue to be a major point of contact among them and with their Superior General.

 

Jesuits and many people who work with them, continue to draw life from the work and thought of lgnatius loyoia. His vision has proved eminently durable. He appears more than ever as a man of expansive and compassionate vision, by no means the military martinet he has sometimes been painted. So five hundred years after his birth and four hundred and fifty years after his inspiration was embodied in the Jesuit Order, many within the Catholic Church and beyond marked these anniversaries. Even the United Nations had passed a resolution to that effect. And so, from afar, we limited mortals salute this imperial man - and I say 'imperial' - because loyoia thought and acted on the grand, Olympian scale, in terms of empires for Christ, spurning the timid, myopic mentality of so many in the Church and the world at large.

One tries to imagine the kind of statement lgnatius might have issued for the occasion. I believe it would be about boundless faith in Christ, love. and compassion for all humankind, and justice everywhere - even if the quest of it leads to imprisonment or the sacrifice of one's own life.

http://wiliam.com/costello/articles/1.html

 

 

[This message has been edited by MJ (edited February 14, 2001).]

[Guest]

Chastity

 

"Chastity is intimate communion with Christ in selfless love. In this love the feelings are not deadened but clarified from within." (Brunner S. J.)

 

CHASTITY: BETHROTHAL TO CHRIST: Christian chastity is intended as a means of restoring to human relationships the purity and unselfishness that are theirs by right. It is not be accounted for by a wholesale condemnation of sex. As a judgment on marriage it is not to be thought of. The fact that celibacy spares a man a load of troubles and worries is also wholly irrelevant. On the contrary, love, true to its nature, impels a man to take other people's trouble and worries upon himself? No, to tot up the advantages of celibacy is a selfish and heathen act, not at all conducive to making chastity stand out in its true colours.

 

TRUE NATURE OF CHASTITY: The real ground for Christian chastity is something totally different. It aims at the same thing as marriage ultimately and intrinsically does: self-surrender in the service of other people: but without the sexual bond and its attendant dangers. Just as poverty concentrates on that essential quality of earthly goods that does man good, and avoids exposure to the entanglements of poverty, so chastity seeks to realise the intrinsic part of marriage, THE PERSONAL SPIRITUAL VALUES, in renunciation of sex with all its allurements and inherent egoism.

 

CHASTITY: LOVE FOR CHRIST AND THE TRINITY: Acknowledgment of the Man-Christ, in whose genuinely human behaviour and feeling the perfection of Divine Love is revealed for all to see, CAN INFLAME human hearts to most noble love and devotion to the God Man. His sublime form can take such complete possession of a man's thoughts and feelings, that there is no room left in him for that intimate attachment to another person which constitutes marriage. CHASTITY IS THUS ESSENTIALLY A SPECIAL VOCATION TO THIS ALL INCLUSIVE LOVE FOR GOD INCARNATE. In this vocation it resembles the ideal form of marriage where each of the two people is strongly and utterly convinced that the other is the only right one and there can be no other, to whom one shall and must belong forever? Reverence for Christ's divinity and human perfection warrants a declaration of total war on self-love.

 

CHASTITY AND FRATERNAL CHARITY: Chastity brings with it a great obligation to love other people. It promotes the serious effort to love other people UNSELFISHLY with no concern for any possible pleasure or advantage to be gained from their society, and no attention paid to any purely instinctive attraction or replusion that may be felt, nor any care whether this affection will contribute to the fulfilment of one's own emotional life? All the opportunities for egoism should be resisted with increasing firmness, BY KEEPING ONE'S GAZE CONSTANTLY FASTENED ON CHRIST OUR LORD.

 

What has to happen is practically a miracle - beyond unredeemed human powers; to be unselfish without being cold in feeling, to love dearly and yet not seek one's self and one's pleasure in this love. Love for the high stature of Christ who stands before the human soul as Man and God, makes such love possible by mightily raising a man above himself. He whose heart is brimming with such love can venture to approach others with warm love WITHOUT RUNNING THE RISK OF ENTANGLEMENT? It is not the warmth of personal attraction that should disappear; on the contrary - but it must burn with a CLEAR flame.

 

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[Guest]

Confused Notions of Sin

 

Probably the main reason for the modern confusion about the notion of gravity of sin is current preoccupation with sexuality. Cardinal Daneels of Belgium admitted recently that for too long the Church has been obsessed with sexuality. It is a sad reflection on the Church's moral teaching that when a person is described as immoral, most people think only of sexual sins. Such a person could be guilty of virtually every other sin - cruelty, injustice, greed - but not judged immoral unless guilty of sexual sin. The traditional moral teaching paid more attention to the sixth and ninth commandments than to the other - unlike Christ who put the emphasis on love - but worse still, its understanding of sex was Predominantly negative.

 

What is urgently needed today for the renewal of the Church and society in general is a positive theology of love rather than a negative theology of sin. Many people in the past believed that certain things were wrong because they were forbidden - but they should have been taught that they were forbidden BECAUSE THEY ARE INTRINSECALLY WRONG. The Commandments are not kill-joys but signposts to liberty and ultimate happiness. St Thomas Aquinas, probably the greatest theologian, stresses that God only forbids certain things because they ultimately hurt US.

 

Unfortunately, for many centuries the constant teaching of the church insisted that intercourse had to be for procreation in order to be free of sin, that intercourse during menstruation or pregnancy was a mortal sin! There was a negative attitude to women and all things feminine but this aberration is totally at variance with the teaching of the Old Testament, beginning with Genesis which depicted sex as something basically human and good. The creation narrative is quite explicit: "God made human beings, male and female...and God was pleased with what he saw. The man and woman were both naked and they were not embarrassed." (Gen 1-2) The Song of Songs describes the physical beauty and erotic love of two young people, a relationship that is sensuous, passionate and fully human. The prophets and later St Paul, were not ashamed to use the marital relationship as a metaphor to describe God's love for his people.

 

The Second Vatican Council speaks of reading the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel. We must then study our contemporary understanding and experience of sex because radical developments have occurred in our life time. The equality and complementarity of the sexes, the personal dimensions of the sexual relationship, the changing patterns of family life, the deeper awareness of what marriage can do in terms of profound personal fulfilment. Morality is about becoming a person and nobody grows alone.

 

It is only in relation to others that we grow in maturity and truly develop-as persons. Wholeness refers to the TOTALITY of the human person and must include the spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical dimensions in oneself and in others. To mature properly is to develop all these harmoniously.

 

It is most unfortunate that so much of the Church's energy in the last forty years has been expended on the question of contraception, and worse still, that so much of the controversy centred more on AUTHORITY than on the moral issue itself We need to re-focus our moral vision so that we are not hypnotised by sex. We must realise that in spite of all the talk about the moral laxity and sexual revolution, for many people their sexual sins constitute only a minor proportion of their general burden of sinfulness.

 

http://wiliam.com/costello/articles/7.html

 

[This message has been edited by MJ (edited February 14, 2001).]

[Guest]

The Art of Friendship & Public Relations

 

Emmet P. Costello SJ

 

The Art of Friendship & Public Relations

 

The most important part of education and maturity is the art of making REAL friends - and keeping them. And let us not deceive ourselves - we can have many acquaintances, but not so many REAL friends. "Like attracts like". In friendship, as in marriage, we normally attract our equals. In order to attract "top" people, we have to be top value ourselves!

 

Cardinal Newman's famous definition of a gentleman is a classic and the whole emphasis is on respect and understanding of others. "It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain. His great concern being to make everyone at their ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, merciful towards the absurd … he never speaks of himself except when compelled … he has no ears for slander or gossip … interprets everything for the best ." His definition merits constant study. And never forget Christ's words: "Whatever you did to one of these, you did it to ME." Christ is mysteriously present in every other person.

 

 

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS

Insights adapted from Dale Carnegie

 

1. GIVE AND SHOW HONEST APPRECIATION: One of America's most brilliant businessmen, Charles Schwab, said: "I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticism from superiors. I never criticise anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work … If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise."

 

2. BECOME GENUINELY INTERESTED IN OTHER PEOPLE": If we want to make friends, we should greet people with animation and enthusiasm. A famous Roman poet, Syrus, observed: "We are interested in others when they are interested in us."

 

3. REMEMBER A PERSON'S NAME - IT IS 'MUSIC' TO HIS EARS!: NEVER overlook the importance people place on their own name. Roosevelt believed that the simplest and most important way of gaining goodwill was by remembering names and thus making people feel important. So when you meet a person, try to repeat his name several times.

 

4. BE A GOOD LISTENER AND ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO TALK ABOUT THEMSELVES: Listening to another intently is one of the highest compliments we can pay them, but to talk incessantly about yourself is a sure recipe for failure. People who talk only of themselves, think only of themselves.

 

5. TALK IN TERMS OF THE OTHER PERSON'S INTERESTS: All leaders know that the best road to a person's heart is to talk about the things he treasures most. Beware these two topics: politics and religion!

 

6. MAKE THE OTHER PERSON FEEL IMPORTANT AND DO IT SINCERELY: John Dewey said that the desire to be important is the deepest urge in human nature and William James said: "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated." Be sure, however, to avoid insincere flattery.

 

7. THE ONLY WAY TO GET THE BEST OF AN ARGUMENT IS TO AVOID IT.

 

8. SHOW RESPECT FOR THE OTHER PERSON'S OPINIONS. NEVER SAY - "YOU'RE WRONG'. Respect also requires that you be punctual for appointments and answer correspondence quickly and courteously.

 

9. IF YOU ARE WRONG, ADMIT IT EMPHATICALLY AND SINCERELY.

 

10. AVOID DISCUSSING THE THINGS ON WHICH YOU DIFFER, BUT EMPHASISE THE ISSUES ON WHICH YOU AGREE. Chinese proverb: "He who treads softly, goes far."

 

11. TRY HONESTLY TO SEE THINGS FROM THE OTHER PERSON'S POINT OF VIEW.

 

12. CALL ATTENTION TO PEOPLE'S MISTAKES - BUT INDIRECTLY! … AND TALK ABOUT YOUR OWN MISTAKES BEFORE CRITICISING THE OTHER PERSON.

 

13. LET THE OTHER PERSON SAVE FACE: Avoid hurting a man in his dignity. Make him feel he is respected and understood.

 

 

TO CONCLUDE: NEVER BE WHOLLY SATISIFIED WITH YOURSELF. That is the secret of the success of Germany and Japan, totally defeated in World War II but rose like a Phoenix from the ashes because of their obsession for perfection. Cardinal Newman wisely observed: To grow is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often."

 

"Know Yourself" - Your strengths and limitations and be realistic in this assessment. Many people exaggerate their strengths and ignore their limitations - to their grave detriment. Professor William James of Harvard claimed that the average person develops only 10% of their latent mental ability!

 

Finally, and most importantly: Aim constantly at deeper faith, love and maturity, the essential constituents of character. All P.R. and "charm" are hollow if a person lacks deep, solid character. In the 4th century the great Saint Augustine wrote: "When you have said 'it's enough', you're DEAD!" There is a never ending challenge to us all in Christ's words: "Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect."

 

We never fully achieve this sublime goal but let us constantly aim at it, trusting in God's grace.

 

 

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[Guest]

SOME IDEAS ON THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

 

There are very strong arguments FOR the existence of God (beware of the word "proofs" - St Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the theologians spoke of the five "WAYS" to God)… and there are no proofs AGAINST the existence of God.

 

ARGUMENTS FOR EXISTENCE OF GOD: 1. COMPLEXITY of man and the universe…. Too marvellous to be the product of mere chance…2. CONSCIENCE (Cardinal Newman's argument). Everything we do is either right or wrong.

 

ARGUMENTS AGAINST EXISTENCE OF GOD: 1. SUFFERING AND EVIL IN THE WORLD: If there be a God, how can he permit so much suffering? Answer: about 90% of world suffering is caused by the abuse of OUR free will…wars, social injustice, drugs….etc. But evils such as cancer, not caused by man's free will, are permitted by God possibly to remind us of the transience of this life… to help us purify our souls. NATURAL DISASTERS, such as floods, are explicable only in the light of eternity where THIS life seems like a few moments of time.

 

In this whole matter it is most important to have an OPEN MIND and lead a good MORAL LIFE… then only can we hope to find TRUTH …The immoral man does not want truth because it will disturb his pleasant, subjective, easy mode of life.

 

DIVINITY OF CHRIST: from the existence of God to the divinity of Christ is a vast leap and is possible ONLY BY THE SPECIAL HELP OF GRACE OF GOD.

 

1. SUPERNATURAL, SPECIAL, PERSONAL gift of God: Christ stressed this point often: "Nobody comes to ME UNLESS THE FATHER WHO SENT ME DRAW HIM." "flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, Peter, but my Father in Heaven."

 

2. FAITH CAN BE LOST OR INCREASED: St Peter: "You carry your faith around in fragile vessels." Faith can be lost by repeated, unrepented grave sin…by lack of prayer and the sacraments. "God is not mocked" St Paul warns us. INCREASED: Apostles to Christ: "Lord, increase our faith." Faith is like an organism - it must be constantly nourished and sustained - and protected.

 

DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH: since in faith we are dealing with the infinite nature of God we must expect that our LIMITED, finite brains cannot grasp God's complexity. St. Augustine: "If you were not Incomprehensible, Lord, you would not be God." Cardinal Newman: "Ten thousand difficulties don't make a doubt."

 

Don't be surprised if at each stage of your life you have varying degrees of difficulties in faith…To weather these crises, two points must be stressed:

 

· IMPORTANCE OF PRAYER: the humility to admit our limitations and ask God's help. "Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom, lead Thou me on… "In prayer the Holy Spirit (whose role is to lead us to Christ) inspires us, directs us and warns us of dangers.

 

· NECESSITY OF LOVE: St John: "Anyone who fails to love can never have known God because God is love." St Augustine labours the point that a refusal to love, is an obstacle to faith. So we must try to love, SINCERELY AND UNSELFISHLY, other people, especially our own family.

 

FAITH is not just believing in things but primarily a PERSON - CHRIST - given us by God as our BROTHER, the Leader, unique and incomparable. Christ wants to lead us to a happier and FULLER life. "I have come that you may have life and have it to the full." He wants us to LIVE - not just exist. He wants us to know REAL love - not just the transient, physical substitute. The commandments are sign posts to real liberty and happiness - not kill-joys. The Catholic faith brings its rewards even in THIS life and so Pope Leo XIII could write: "The Catholic Church has for her own immediate and natural purpose the saying of souls…. yet in regard to things temporal she is the source of benefits as manifold and great as if the chief end of her existence were to ensure the prospering of our earthly life."

 

Like the man in the Gospel we must often say to Christ:

 

"LORD, I BELIEVE. HELP MY UNBELIEF."

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[Guest]

The Crisis of Faith and the Institutional Church

 

Many years ago Professor Arnold Toynbee could write:

 

"We have obviously, for a number of generations past, been living on spiritual capital, I mean clinging to Christian practice without possessing Christian belief - and practice unsupported by belief is a wasting effort, as we have already discovered to our dismay in this generation."

 

The famous Sister Teresa of Calcutta who worked among the poorest of India, said she was more distressed by the SPIRITUAL poverty of Australia than the MATERIAL poverty of India! The crisis of faith is sadly evident in the diminishing numbers at Sunday Mass. In 1964, Mass attendance was about 64% of Catholics - today it has plummeted to about 16%. Vocations to the priesthood and religious life are minimal, and religious vocations are normally the barometer of the faith of any country.

 

THE INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH: Many teenagers today tell me they reject the Church - but not Christ. That is a fallacy, a contradiction because the Church is the extension of Christ who founded the Church to continue his mission through time and space. Christ accepts us on HIS terms, not ours! One of the most famous Jesuits of this century, Fr Teilhard de Chardin, wrote: "Without the Church, Christ is fragmented, evaporates, or cancels himself out."

 

The Church is not only divine, but also human - sometimes too human, with all the limitations of men since Christ works through human instrumentality. St Augustine, of "Confessions" fame and one of the greatest theologians of the Church, expressed the divine-human element thus: "If Judas (a bad priest) baptises, Christ baptises." We must constantly try to see beyond the inevitable human limitations to the divine reality, CHRIST, who is always there.

 

There are, and always will be, mistakes and failings in the Church. In our times, it seems to me, the Church fails to communicate adequately. The eminent American Jesuit, Fr Avery Dulles, rightly observes: "We cannot nourish contemporary man with the stale fragments of a meal prepared for believers of the 4th, 5th or 16th century …. The Christian message must be refocussed in a way that speaks immediately and directly to the deepest concerns of the present."

 

A few years ago the famous Jesuit Cardinal Martini, Archbishop of Milan, who speaks about ten languages and is author of about forty books, said to me:

 

"This is 1996 but some people are talking as though it were 1966 or worse, even 1866. At all times we must listen to the people."

 

Communication is now, probably, the most powerful weapon - for good or for bad - in the world. The Churches must recognise this fact and modernise their techniques. We have the greatest "product" ever to promote - JESUS CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL OF LOVE. We are not doing that job as well as we should. Internet - website - can be the answer, giving us not merely very limited parochial potential but truly universal, global potential.

 

A SOLUTION: The person of Christ, as brother, friend, saviour, ALIVE in our midst, should be the constant inspiration and hope of our lives. We must work at faith, just as we have to work at sport, business, marriage. If we find our faith is getting dim and weak, we must increase our prayer, attendance at Mass and recite that magnificent prayer from the Gospel: "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." And never think of the Church as a "kill-joy" but as a way to happiness and fulfilment as Christ promised: "I have come that you may have life and have it to the full." Yes, even in THIS life.

 

Pope Leo XIII highlighted the benefits of the Church with these famous words: "The Church has for her own immediate and natural purpose the saving of souls…. Yet in regard to things temporal, she is the source of benefits as manifold and great as if the chief end of her existence were to ensure the prospering of our earthly life."

 

 

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[Guest]

"Faith Through Crucible of Doubt"

Two Prophets: Dostoevsky and St. Thérèse of Lisieux

 

We must all face the fragility of our experience of faith and to suggest that this is one of the realities that needs to be faced. I am not proposing that faith itself, as rooted in God, is uncertain, a matter of "perhaps yes, perhaps no". The point is rather that on the level of experience one should not be too surprised to find flux. As Bosset put it in the seventeenth century, "there is an atheism concealed in all hearts, which is diffused in all our actions." And our situation of three centuries later only serves to make this experience of the absence of God less concealed and more frequent. God is not obvious, even to saints. And therefore I want to supplement my little incident with the much more profound experiences of two of the prophets of our modern age, a man and a woman whose names are not often linked: the novelist Dostoevsky and the Carmelite, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. They were prophets in being able to fathom the crucial spiritual struggles of their own age long before most people had become aware of them, and thus they were forerunners of the crisis of faith and of culture that surrounds us now in the late twentieth century. Both of them in quiet different ways became preoccupied with atheism, even thought both of them remained fervent believers. More significantly, they did not concern themselves only with atheism around them in other people; rather each of them struggled with a form of atheism within their own experience.

 

It is just over a century now since Fyodor Dostoevsky died, and yet, in his central insights about atheism he reads like one of our contempories. It was a topic that obsessed him all his life, both within his own life and in his work as a novelist. In 1868 he said that he planned to write a long novel called "Atheism", but in fact this theme stretched out over the three major works he was to complete between then and his death: The Devils, A Raw Youth, and most famous of all The Brothers Karamazov. As he said himself it was a question that had tormented him all his life long: "is it possible for a civilised man to believe?" With all his heart he came to answer yes to that question, but he was prophetic in that his portrayals of atheism in fiction have been acknowledged by many unbelievers as the best dramatisations of their position - even though they came from the pen of a convinced Christian.

 

For Dostoevsky the God-question was far from a purely intellectual one, and he was one of the first to explore in depth the link between atheism and the isolation of the thinker from simple human contacts and emotions. Atheism for him was never a question of the mind alone, but rather a matter of basic choice about life. He insisted vehemently that the question of God's existence would influence everything at the centre of life and society; if there is no God, then is everything morally permissible? It is against this background of his own painful searching and finding that Dosteovsky is able, in his fiction, to do justice to the lonely agony of the unbeliever and at the same time present the case against faith with frightening force.

 

Only on one point does Dostoevsky continually portray his atheist figures as lacking: they are intellectual giants who are deeply divided within themselves and often incapable of simple love.

 

At the very end of his life Dostoevsky wrote in a letter about his own journey of faith: "my hosanna has come through the great crucible of doubt." In others words he felt personally burdened with the huge complexity of the new culture then emerging in Europe and in Russia, and he experienced within himself the divided consciousness that could easily give birth to atheism. He saw this as involving a split between attitudes of submission and of rebellion, between a brotherhood of hearts and an isolation of mere mind or mere will. From the basis of his own conflicts he was able to capture the central tensions of his whole time. In this he was both alike to, and quite different from, the woman born in France some fifty years later than himself. Both were prophets, of immense spiritual stature, and both strangely concerned with atheism. Where Dostoevsky was trained by education and social milieu to be acutely conscious of the intellectual currents of his age, Thérèse was almost entirely ignorant of the world of ideas.

 

But both of them penetrated beneath the merely intellectual struggles to the spiritual drama of faith and atheism. And more importantly, both of these Christians entered with an extraordinary level of sympathy, into the inner world of atheism as experienced. For as will be seen Thérèse in her very different way could well echo Dostoevsky's claim to have earned her hosanna by enduring her version of the crucible of doubt.

 

The inner journey of Thérèse of Lisieux can be told largely in her own words, from her autobiography and her letters. It is there that an extraordinary story unfolds, how a young nun, who was to die at the age of 24, willingly entered into an experience of atheism.

 

This last phase of her life began in the early hours of Good Friday 1896 when she vomited blood, the first serious indications of the tuberculosis that was to kill her some eighteen months later. Her first response to this haemorrhage was one of welcome for the "first summons" of death and therefore of heaven, and her autobiography goes out of its way to stress the consolation and feeling that she experienced on that Good Friday:

 

I had a faith so living and so lucid that the thought of heaven was the sum of all my happiness. I couldn't believe that there really were godless people who had no faith at all.

 

But all this freedom of spirit was to change drastically, and she was to begin a strange and painful companionship with atheists, which lasted until just before her death. In the days after Easter she tells us that "Jesus taught me to realise" the existence of "souls which have no faith". From this moment of insight into the reality of atheism, her inner life was overrun "by an impenetrable darkness", and the idea of heaven, which had previously been such a source of joy for her, became "a subject of nothing but conflict and torment'. She entered a state of emptiness where "everything has disappeared", and where any effort to seek out some consolation seemed doomed o even deeper desolation. She recounts that when she tried to think of heaven she would experience only a darkness filled with the mocking voices of atheism:

 

It's all a dream this talk of a heavenly country … and of a God who made it all … All right, all right, go on longing for death. But death will only give you - not what you hope - but a still darker night, the night of nothingness.

It seems incredible that this young nun, who had led the most sheltered existence possible, should now be sharing the experience of Dostoevsky and even of Nietzche, and should be a forerunner of the drama of atheism to be voiced in similar words by so many thinkers of later generation. Yet here in 1896 we have her expressing her haunting fears that God might be mere illusion, that her hope for heaven was only a deceptive fairy-tale, and that despair was the ultimate truth.

 

It was these feelings of atheism that dominated the saint's inner life for the final phase of her existence. And it involved more than feelings:

 

If you only knew what horrible thoughts crowd in upon me all the time! My mind is gripped by the arguments of the worst materialists.

 

Thérèse Martin probably did not know the name of a single major materialist, much less their philosophical positions. But at a much deeper level than intellectual debate, she took on herself the burden of modern atheism as experienced, and this became now the heart of her contemplative vocation. The whole content of faith became unreal to her, and in such a powerful way that she said she understood something of the urge to suicide. But the clearest statement of her loss of any feeling of faith also reveals the motive why she had opted for such an unexpected inner journey:

 

I no longer believe in eternal life; it seems to me there is nothing beyond this mortal life. Everything is brought to an end. Love only remains.

 

This was the strange secret of Thérèse, that she retained the core of faith which is love, even while suffering the loss of all emotional and intellectual sense of faith. And the love she means is two-fold: love of God and love of her "unbelieving brothers" for whom she offers her suffering of the abyss. In spite of the blitz of her emotions and thoughts, she never swerved in her fidelity to the God she believed in:

 

Although I have no feeling faith, I still try to carry out the works of faith … I do try to live the faith, even when I get no satisfaction out of it.

 

Indeed she seems at times to have relished "each challenge from the enemy" and to imagine God as wanting "to know how far I will push my confidence".

 

Against a background of rapidly declining health, Thérèse went through her last year and a half with total spiritual dryness and constant temptations against faith. Through this experience of atheism, at least on the level of mind and feelings, she envisaged herself as called to eat at the table of unbelievers. It meant a sharing of bitterness and an entry to nothingness. Only a certain dark hope and love supported her in this spiritual agony. Even as her own faith seemed meaningless she offered her experience so "that those not yet illumined by the torch of faith may behold it at last".

 

How is one to make sense of this unique story? It would be easy to dismiss it as neurotic, an there is evidence that Thérèse was prone to emotional disturbance. What is less easy to dismiss is the love shining through the experience of darkness. Thérèse seems to embody the paradoxes of Psalm 115: "I trusted even when I said 'I am utterly in darkness' and when I said in my panic, 'No one can be trusted'. There are two levels here in the psalm and two levels in Thérèse. Her story seems to suggest that there are many layers in what we call faith (and many levels in what full atheism would mean too). One level includes one's inner or felt experience, understanding of what is happening, the words in which one seeks to interpret my experience. But there is another layer, deeper or higher than experience and interpretation of experience, it is the layer of commitment and of relationship to God. Although Thérèse suffered a total eclipse of her sense of God on the level of experience, and of her ability to find God credible on the level of understanding, she never lost her faith on the deeper levels of conviction and relationhips. Through all her desolations of mind and heart she shared the agony of atheism. But her rootedness in love kept her open to God in ways she could not perceive.

 

Reflecting on her inner story, one discovers a nugget of hidden treasure for all who struggle over faith, and it can be stated quite simply: love is more important than explicit faith; indeed love can be the shape faith takes when darkness comes and when understanding seems impossible. To express it so baldly is to do an injustice to the power of the story of Thérèse. Hers was a prophetic vocation, even a providential one. At the very close of the nineteenth century this young woman entered a frightening inner world of atheism as experienced, and she crowned her sainthood through this ordeal.

 

Her story, with its intensity, foreshadowed the minor agonies of many ordinary people in the century then about to begin, and now drawing to a close. But her story can also be read as a parable pointing to the purifying of faith by atheism. This purifying may be true both personally and collectively for many people in our century.

 

(Extracts from "Help My Unbelief" by M. Gallagher, S.J.)

http://wiliam.com/costello/faith/6.html

 

 

 

 

 

[This message has been edited by MJ (edited February 14, 2001).]

[Guest]

In Search of God - and of Christ

 

St. Augustine, author of the famous CONFESSIONS, once a very pagan and immoral atheist, later a convert Catholic, bishop and most eminent theologian, could write:

 

 

"If you were not incomprehensible, O Lord, you would not be God, for how can the FINITE understand the INFINITE?"

 

In a challenging and highly acclaimed new book, "In Search of Belief" a distinguished Benedictine American nun, Joan Chittister, writes:

 

"I can believe in God or not believe in God, yes. But there is a price for the choice."

 

"Not to believe in God is to believe only in myself and what I see around me. Without a God, I am God. I make myself the god of my own world. I worship gods of my own making - money, power, prestige, approval, things. I insist that I will worship nothing I cannot see, and so instead I worship all the things I do see, with all their limits, all their limitations, and all the limiting they do to the expanse of my soul. It is a sorry sight. It is an even skimpier definition of humanity. Without God, human dignity itself is in danger. What else imbues human life with value, what else confers on a person an inalienable dignity, if not the fact that they, too, if there is a God, are more than they seem? No God, no meaning. No God, no purpose. No God, no cosmic quality about us at all. We are simply sand flowing through a corruptible hourglass..

 

In the long light of human history, then, it is not belief in God that sets us apart. It is the kind of God in which we choose to believe that in the end makes all the difference. Some believe in a God of wrath and become wrathful with others as a result. Some believe in a God who is indifferent to the world and, when they find themselves alone, as all of us do at some time or another, shrivel up and die inside from the indifference they feel in the world around them. Some believe in a God of laws and crumble in spirit and psyche when they themselves break them or else become even more stern in demanding from others standards they themselves cannot keep. They conceive of God a the manipulator of the universe, rather than its blessing-Maker. They project onto God humanity's own small needs.

 

I have known all of those Gods in my own life. They have all failed me. I have feared God and been judgmental of others. I have used God to get me through life and, as a result, failed to take steps to change life myself. I have been blind to the God within me and so, thinking of God as far away, have failed to make God present to others. I have allowed God to be mediated to me through images of God foreign to the very idea of God: God the puppeteer, God the potentate, God the persecutor make a mockery of the very definition of God. I have come to the conclusion, after a lifetime of looking for God, that such a divinity is a graven image of ourselves, that such a deity is not a god big enough to believe in. Indeed it is the God in whom we choose to believe that determines the rest of life for us. In our conception of the nature of God lies the kernel of the spiritual life. Made in the image of God, we grow in the image of the God we make for ourselves."

 

 

This extract used with permission, Harper Collins Religious. In Search of Belief by Joan Chittister: First published in Australia by Harper Collins Religious in 1999. Fax 03 9654 5516 Phone 03 9654 2365 RRP $Aus 26.95

 

 

There is widespread cynicism and unbelief in the world today and the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church thirty-five years ago admitted that the failure of believers to live up to their beliefs is one of the chief causes of unbelief. Cardinal Lercaro of Bologna spoke of the "vast plain of mediocrity." The Jesuit Cardinal, Henri de Lubac commented: "In the Church the mediocre feel especially at home… and everywhere set the tone of things." And the famous French Jesuit, Ives de Montcheuil, wrote: "We must blame not so much the loosing of evil forces but the INSUFFICIENCY of our witness…. We are the salt of the earth. If humanity is being decomposed, it is because we have not answered our vocation." Powerful words!

 

Traditional arguments for belief include those of St Augustine - "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you"… The "five ways" of St Thomas Aquinas, and Cardinal Newman, the conscience in us all.

 

Modern Catholic approaches attempt to unify belief in God and the fact of human existence. The German theologian, Hans Kung, admits that neither belief nor unbelief can be finally proved but the HYPOTHESIS of God answers more questions about the meaning, mystery and purpose of reality and our human existence than does unbelief.

 

It is most erroneous to assume - as some earlier authors did - that all those who explicitly reject or ignore God are guilty of damnation. The unbeliever can attain a saving faith implied in his or her commitment in conscience to those values and activities which can be reflections of divine reality. In the 4th century, St Augustine could write: "Many who appear to IN the Church are really outside it… and many who appear to be OUTSIDE the Church, are really IN it."

 

In Search for Christ

 

We can only believe in the divinity of Christ by a special gift of God, as Christ taught us: "Nobody can come to me unless the Father who sent me, draw him." And when Peter said: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God", Christ responded: "Blessed are you, Peter, because flesh and blood have not revealed this to you BUT MY FATHER IN HEAVEN."

 

We must all continually pray fro a greater faith. Even the Apostles who witnessed Christ's many miracles did not hesitate to say: "Lord, increase our faith." And if we have only a minimal faith in Christ - almost none - then pray thus: "Christ, IF you exist, help me, enlighten me, guide me."

 

Often it is not intellectual arguments that lead us to Christ but the saintly witness of Christians. Malcolm Muggeridge claimed that his conversion to Catholicism was inspired by the lives of Sister Teresa of Calcutta and Pope John Paul II.

 

In our search for God and Christ, there must be less emphasis on the mind and ever greater emphasis on the heart, as I write in my book, "Christ My Brother"….. p 88-89.

 

"The Heart and Affectivity in Spirituality

 

The Hebrew word for heart, lev, occurs over a thousand times in the Old Testament which shows how important a role it played in Hebrew life. It is in the heart that one is helped to understand divine things and recollect the presence of God. 'Deep within them I will plant my law, writing it on their hearts' (Jer 31:33). And does not John remind us that 'the man who does not love cannot know God because God is love'?

 

Aristotle, alas, played down the role of the heart and claimed knowledge to be our highest activity, disparaged the world of affectivity and thereby influenced many Christian thinkers to teach that emotions were highly suspect and so, much damage was done to a warm and authentic Christian spirituality. It tended to remove deep affectivity from God the Father's relationships with us, his children. Consequently, the intellect to know God's commands and the Church's teaching became the dominant element of Christian life. Pascal was so right, however, when he reminded us that 'the heart has reasons the mind does not know of'.

 

Today we are more aware that God is encountered more in the heart than in the intellect or mind. The dominant characteristic of Eastern Christianity, so rooted in scripture and the experience of the early saints and mystics, is founded on this: the mind is not the ultimate foundation or core of human life. Paul summarised the role of the heart and God's grace in giving us a spiritual knowledge beyond rational knowledge when he wrote: 'that the peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus' (Phil 4:1)."

 

A New Understanding of the Heart Symbol

 

Our hearts play a vital role in scripture, liturgy and especially in all our human relationships. We are commanded to love God 'with our whole heart, our whole mind, our whole strength' (Deut 6:6). And God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah 'When you seek me you will find me, when you seek me with all your heart' (Jer 29:13). We can all experience some fragility in our faith - even the saints did - but let us imitate the man in the gospel who could say the Christ;

 

"Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief."

(Mark 9:24)

 

http://wiliam.com/costello/faith/7.html

[Guest]

Christ and feminist theology

 

No religious founder respected women more than Christ and today, more than ever before, women are playing a most vital role in the Church, even in the sphere of theology, previously the exclusive domain of the male. Christ's question 'Who do you say 1 am?' is examined with yet another view point when answered from the faith experience of believing women.

 

In the early Church certain Catholic theologians wrote with an anti-feminist bias which the Church today wants to forget! In the world at large, women are still poorly treated. According to UN statistics, while forming one half of the world's population, women do three quarters of the world's work, receive one tenth of the world's salary, and own one hundredth of the world's land. More than three quarters of starving people are women and their dependant children. Women are often sexually exploited and raped. Sexism is pervasive throughout the world. All this is totally at variance with Christ's universal love and companionship.

 

Christ and women? Christ was a male being - that is beyond question, but the problem arises when his maleness is elevated into a universal principle and such reasoning can contribute to a subordination of women. Sometimes it is assumed that the male elements of Christ reveal the maleness of God. Did not Christ call God 'Father'? However, since God is Spirit neither male nor female but Creator of both in God's own image, the maleness of Christ however, has been interpreted as indicating the exclusive maleness of God.

 

Even the gender of Jesus has been taken to be the paradigm of what it means to be human and this can be interpreted to mean that the human male is closer to the human ideal than is the human female. Theologically, it would be hard to deny that at the Incarnation God could have become a woman. But taking for granted a long tradition of inferiority of women - totally unfounded in Scripture - some Christian theology has tended to elevate maleness as the only genuine way of being human and so Christ has become the male revealer of a male God.

 

Christ's referral to God as 'Abba' must be carefully interpreted because 'Abba' is the total opposite of a dominating father but rather the term indicates a compassionate, loving, intimate Father who creates a human community of mutuality and understanding. Far from being the powerful patriarch, 'Abba' creates a community of brothers and sisters. That is precisely what Christ tried to do - for was he not, as St Paul reminds us, 'the image of the invisible God'? One female theologian commented that the problem is not that Christ was a male - but that more males were not like him!

 

Finally, feminist liberation theology of Christ has highlighted Christ as a rather revolutionary 'Liberator'. not only in a generic sense with regard to the poor but in a very special way with regard to women.

 

http://wiliam.com/costello/books/christmyb...r/feminist.html

 

 

 

[This message has been edited by MJ (edited February 14, 2001).]