Anyone who reads the Magnificat liturgical prayer journal on a daily basis, especially the short, introductory mediations, is being gradually, systematically catechized into the spirituality of the Communion and Liberation movement, which might be called a catechesis of desire. The key insight of their founder, Monsignor Luigi Giussani, is that the human heart is a desire for God, a longing for infinite and eternal Love.
This is, of course, a classic Catholic intuition: St. Augustine famously said “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You O Lord” and St. Thomas Aquinas held that all human desire is implicitly, even when erroneously, a movement towards the good, or towards God. Perhaps no one, until Monsignor Giussani, has developed and expanded this insight into a comprehensive path to God. In sharp contrast to residual Jansenism, which developed Augustine’s more negative evaluation of human desire, Giussani celebrated desire with an exultant positivism. The tone of his writing is unrestrainedly euphoric with the good news: our desires, even in their often-deformed state, are fundamentally good and destined for fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ. In contrast to the negativity of moralism, he exults in the Beauty and Joy of life in Christ. Monsignor Albacete, his friend and American protégé, recounts the story of when Giussani came upon two young lovers in a passionate, erotic embrace on a starry night. They were embarrassed but he only asked: “What does what you are doing have to do with all these stars in the sky?” The disciple Albacete explains: the tender mutual longing the lovers have for each other is reflective of the even deeper human desire for a Love that is Eternal and Infinite. Far from being upset or judgmental about the lovers’ embrace, the Monsignor is in awe of it.
We encounter here an extravagant positivity about human desire as fundamentally good, as essentially a longing for God and as destined to be more than fulfilled. This excessive affirmation seems incongruous, however, with what we experience as the irrationality, toxicity and destructiveness of so much of human desire. This approach might well be complemented by two different, contemporary evaluations of human desire: that of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the mimetic theory of Rene Girard.
The AA of Bill W and Doctor Bob unveiled the dynamics of addictive desire as compulsive, self-destructive, and insatiable. This might be called “false desire.” By definition, addictive desire is beyond the control of the person who is enslaved and powerless. Much of the practice and insight generated by the 12-step programs is a retrieval or re-statement of traditional understandings of sin. The passage to freedom and interior peace includes a series of quite specific steps and practices, mostly involving regular meetings and personal sponsorship, and an underlying spiritual attitude of confession of wrongdoing and surrender of one’s will and life to God. These steps are, then, a journey of liberation from false desire into genuine desire, desire for God.
A third dimension of human desire has been thoroughly explored in the mimetic theory of Rene Girard. According to this, human longing is incessant and insatiable but has a vague, undefined nature, in contrast to the structured instincts of animals. We desire but don’t know what we desire so we are ceaselessly looking to and imitating others. We are made to image or mirror another, starting with the smile of our mother. Each of us, in everything we do, is always a reflection of the desire we see in another. Desire as mimetic is neither good nor evil but is a possibility for either. When we look mimetically upon evil we ourselves emulate and become that evil and so associate ourselves with greed, violence, and covetousness in all its forms. By contrast, when we look into the face of genuine Love, we ourselves are moved inexorably (one might say, efficaciously) to reflect that love.
Our behavior, then, springs not from an autonomous, self-directing will, but out of the mimetic, emulating, unitive gaze to the other, the other as Godly or ungodly, the other as gracious or vicious, the other as generosity or as covetousness.
These three approaches move in a shared direction: decisively, they reject a moralism that locates the springs of human agency in an independent, autonomous, self-directing will. They all see human desire as infinite, incessant, and itself more deeply constitutive of the human person than the intellect, the will and the emotions. Combined with an understanding of sexual desire as outlined by Pope John Paul the Great, these complementary visions of human longing promise a most rich anthropology of the person as infinite desire.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Monday, October 3, 2011
The Third, Lay Magisterium
We Catholics defer to the college of bishops in union with the pope as our magisterium, our indefectible teacher, inspired by the Holy Spirit to guide us in faith and morals. In the wake of the 2nd Vatican Council, an alternate, frequently oppositional magisterium took shape in the form of the theological guild. With their status immensely enhanced by their input into the Council and their ability to straddle the ecclesiastical and the secular academic worlds, they gave voice to a progressive consensus that mimicked the intellectual fashions of secular elites and thus criticized the Vatican, tradition, authority, classic Catholic piety and sexual norms.
Subsequently, in a much more gradual and dispersed manner, a third magisterium emerged, mostly from the laity. Counter-cultural and reactive against liberal fashion, an array of lay voices articulated a staunch, militant, “thick” Catholic vision. These voices were usually lay in two senses: not members of the clergy (or religious orders) and not credentialed academic theologians. Many were associated with the new ecclesial movements; most aligned themselves passionately with the dual pontificate of John Paul/Benedict. They draw from different sources and take distinct shapes but all tend to be: populist and reactive against cultural elites; filial, humble before authority and tradition; evangelical, exultant in the Person of Jesus Christ; pious in traditional ways; critical of modernity; skeptical of the hegemony of a reductive science and an overwhelming technocracy; militant in defense of innocent life and the family; and keenly aware of the supernatural including the diabolical, the mystical, and the communion of saints beyond death. The distinct streams of this rich, symphonic lay synthesis include:
- Charismatic lay leaders (Ralph Martin, Steve Clark) who incorporated the legacy of Evangelical/Pentecostal Protestantism into a new Catholic gestalt. Prominent in this group is Neal Lozano whose ministry of deliverance from evil spirits is gentle, Jesus-centered, counseling-based, and user-friendly for the ordinary layman.
- The brilliant, new-yet-traditional , extended and arduous catechetical itinerary of Kiko Arguello which may join the ranks of Classic Catholic achievements such as the monastery, the mendicants, the spiritual exercises of Ignatius, the mystical heritage of St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila, and the French Catholic Renaissance in spirituality.
- EWTN lay personalities (Marcus Grodi, Raymond Arroyo) who reach an astonishingly wide audience, including the elderly, sick and isolated. Mother Angelica so shrewdly yielded control of her powerful network to a Board of red-meat Catholic laymen, just as the American bishops and the Vatican were both considering a “hostile take-over” through her vow of obedience.
- Psychologists like Paul Vitz and the Institute for Psychological Sciences who integrate good psychology into a Catholic anthropology and critique the secularist biases of mainstream psychology.
- Gil Baile who develops and popularizes Rene Girard’s breakthrough anthropology of mimesis and sacrificial violence and integrates it with the theology of Balthasar, John Paul and Benedict.
- Converts: The steady flow of high calibre (intellectually and spiritually) converts is infusing our lay leadership with new riches. These bring an intense appreciation for specifically Catholic values (authority, Eucharist, Mary, the saints, etc.) as well as enrichments from their own traditions. This includes the Jewish converts of the Association of Hebrew Catholics as well as Evangelicals and other Protestants who give their stirring witnesses on EWTN's The Journey Home. Interestingly, ministers and Rabbi converts become, ordinarily, Catholic laymen and so infuse the laity with rich theological and ministerial resources.
- Other lay conspirators from the Marian movements, pro-life groups, Natural Family Planners, Theology of the Body enthusiasts, micro-Agapic-initiatives (Jean Vanier, Dorothy Day), Latin Mass afficionados, and allies in the new religious orders (Friars of the Renewal) and academia (notably, the outstanding lay theologians of the John Paul II Institute in DC under the leadership of David Schindler.)
Blessed John Cardinal Newman observed that it was largely the faith of the laity that preserved the Catholic faith during the Arian controversy when a majority of bishops went into heresy. So today, we see the lay defense of crucial Catholic values and beliefs that are disparaged by liberal elites and often avoided by an irenic, conflict-averse episcopacy. In their opposition to liberal consensus, these voices are able to be more militant and emphatic than the more diplomatic, moderate institutional magisterium of pope and bishops. They are often to the “right” of official leadership. For example, they may be more vigorous politically in defense of human life and the family. They are more likely to see the negative side of issues like evolution as a mega-theory, global change as manmade and catastrophic, and the UN as an actor for the common good.
These voices tend to be reactive against post-enlightenment modernity. They are more sensitive to the darker powers operative under the cover of rationality, individual freedoms, science, technology, big government and business. In a prophetic mode, they alert us to contemporary evils in a manner not accessible to one like our current Pontiff whose every utterance is a masterpiece of balance, moderation, nuance and complexity.
Outside of the specific areas of faith and morals are the vast, complex arenas of culture where our papal and episcopal magisterium enjoys no direct, divine guarantees. In these areas of peril and combat, in our discerning of spirits and reading of the signs of the times, we do well to heed the voices of the laity in the trenches, those close to family and ethnic faith, those distanced from and so less deceived by illusions of prestige and privilege, those loyal to our heritage and our ancestors.
Subsequently, in a much more gradual and dispersed manner, a third magisterium emerged, mostly from the laity. Counter-cultural and reactive against liberal fashion, an array of lay voices articulated a staunch, militant, “thick” Catholic vision. These voices were usually lay in two senses: not members of the clergy (or religious orders) and not credentialed academic theologians. Many were associated with the new ecclesial movements; most aligned themselves passionately with the dual pontificate of John Paul/Benedict. They draw from different sources and take distinct shapes but all tend to be: populist and reactive against cultural elites; filial, humble before authority and tradition; evangelical, exultant in the Person of Jesus Christ; pious in traditional ways; critical of modernity; skeptical of the hegemony of a reductive science and an overwhelming technocracy; militant in defense of innocent life and the family; and keenly aware of the supernatural including the diabolical, the mystical, and the communion of saints beyond death. The distinct streams of this rich, symphonic lay synthesis include:
- Charismatic lay leaders (Ralph Martin, Steve Clark) who incorporated the legacy of Evangelical/Pentecostal Protestantism into a new Catholic gestalt. Prominent in this group is Neal Lozano whose ministry of deliverance from evil spirits is gentle, Jesus-centered, counseling-based, and user-friendly for the ordinary layman.
- The brilliant, new-yet-traditional , extended and arduous catechetical itinerary of Kiko Arguello which may join the ranks of Classic Catholic achievements such as the monastery, the mendicants, the spiritual exercises of Ignatius, the mystical heritage of St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila, and the French Catholic Renaissance in spirituality.
- EWTN lay personalities (Marcus Grodi, Raymond Arroyo) who reach an astonishingly wide audience, including the elderly, sick and isolated. Mother Angelica so shrewdly yielded control of her powerful network to a Board of red-meat Catholic laymen, just as the American bishops and the Vatican were both considering a “hostile take-over” through her vow of obedience.
- Psychologists like Paul Vitz and the Institute for Psychological Sciences who integrate good psychology into a Catholic anthropology and critique the secularist biases of mainstream psychology.
- Gil Baile who develops and popularizes Rene Girard’s breakthrough anthropology of mimesis and sacrificial violence and integrates it with the theology of Balthasar, John Paul and Benedict.
- Converts: The steady flow of high calibre (intellectually and spiritually) converts is infusing our lay leadership with new riches. These bring an intense appreciation for specifically Catholic values (authority, Eucharist, Mary, the saints, etc.) as well as enrichments from their own traditions. This includes the Jewish converts of the Association of Hebrew Catholics as well as Evangelicals and other Protestants who give their stirring witnesses on EWTN's The Journey Home. Interestingly, ministers and Rabbi converts become, ordinarily, Catholic laymen and so infuse the laity with rich theological and ministerial resources.
- Other lay conspirators from the Marian movements, pro-life groups, Natural Family Planners, Theology of the Body enthusiasts, micro-Agapic-initiatives (Jean Vanier, Dorothy Day), Latin Mass afficionados, and allies in the new religious orders (Friars of the Renewal) and academia (notably, the outstanding lay theologians of the John Paul II Institute in DC under the leadership of David Schindler.)
Blessed John Cardinal Newman observed that it was largely the faith of the laity that preserved the Catholic faith during the Arian controversy when a majority of bishops went into heresy. So today, we see the lay defense of crucial Catholic values and beliefs that are disparaged by liberal elites and often avoided by an irenic, conflict-averse episcopacy. In their opposition to liberal consensus, these voices are able to be more militant and emphatic than the more diplomatic, moderate institutional magisterium of pope and bishops. They are often to the “right” of official leadership. For example, they may be more vigorous politically in defense of human life and the family. They are more likely to see the negative side of issues like evolution as a mega-theory, global change as manmade and catastrophic, and the UN as an actor for the common good.
These voices tend to be reactive against post-enlightenment modernity. They are more sensitive to the darker powers operative under the cover of rationality, individual freedoms, science, technology, big government and business. In a prophetic mode, they alert us to contemporary evils in a manner not accessible to one like our current Pontiff whose every utterance is a masterpiece of balance, moderation, nuance and complexity.
Outside of the specific areas of faith and morals are the vast, complex arenas of culture where our papal and episcopal magisterium enjoys no direct, divine guarantees. In these areas of peril and combat, in our discerning of spirits and reading of the signs of the times, we do well to heed the voices of the laity in the trenches, those close to family and ethnic faith, those distanced from and so less deceived by illusions of prestige and privilege, those loyal to our heritage and our ancestors.
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