Fidelity and Fecundity

Success, productivity, achievement and efficiency are all good values, in their proper place, but are vastly overrated, even idolized, in our culture that is sick with meritocracy (the competent are inordinately rewarded, the slow or disabled are neglected and even despised), careerism (we value people by their achievements), and techno-idolatry (obsession with control and production; dismissal of contemplation as resting in beauty and meaning.) The ugliest word in the English language is "reproductive" as applied to sexuality and conception. When I taught high school girls, a "liberated" feminist colleague asked me: "Doesn't it scare you that our students could be reproductive agents?" I was quiet and then asked: "Do you mean mothers?" What scared her I didn't know; for my part I was in awe of the mysterious endowment of  maternity these young women already enjoyed in potential.  "Reproduction" to me means xeroxing copies of some form; or an assembly line that cranks out 750 widgets an hour, all identical and therefore "reproduced."  To apply this mechanical term to the Mystery of conjugal love and human conception is sacrilegious  and blasphemous. Anyone who can speak this word with a straight face is already lost in a world bereft of depth, enchantment, purpose or splendor! By contrast with the empty, stark, dismal world of "reproduction" is the luminous Mystery of conjugal communion, fidelity, intimacy and fecundity (fruitfulness). These indwell each other in an enchanting and awesome manner. Fidelity, communion and intimacy (emotional, intellectual, and spiritual as well as physical) entail a mutuality in rest and deep interaction between the Lovers, be they married, friends or family members. These are not actions, externally, against objects as in the production process, but a mysticism of profound, active-and-receptive inter-communion. And out of this, there emerges...surprisingly, mysteriously, wondrously,..fecundity or fruitfulness. The epitome of this is, of course, the union of man and woman which is blessed by the procreation of an utterly new and distinct and infinitely valuable person. But something similar happens between friends and family members and marvelously so in any genuine spiritual friendship, that is any relationship of affection and respect in which the two, or more, open up to the True, the Beautiful and the Good. Imagine the fecundity of a garden: it is not a production or achievement but a serendipitous synchronocity that involves seed, soil, nutrients, water, sunshine and a greater directing hand that we can refer to as nature or God. Something wonderful, ineffable, and inexplicable is at work...beyond even the sum total of the elements. And so, let's ease up on efficiency, achievement and productivity! Let's surrender ourselves, in fidelity, to each other, and our purposes, and our communities/families, and our God! Let's rest with each other and in each other...inefficiently...in affection, reverence, tenderness...and hope for the fecundity that comes only as gift!

Fatherless: A World Without Men

In an insightful, encouraging article, Jacqueline Mattis ("Religion and Spirituality in the Meaning Making and Coping Experiences of Afro-American Women: a Qualitative Analysis" in Psychology of Woman Quarterly 26 (2006) 309-321) highlights the importance of faith and prayer in the lives of representative Afro-American women. Far from a crutch or a sign of immaturity/irrationality, she shows that religion/spirituality is a source of strength, determination, resilience and purpose as such women face tremendous adversity and hardship. How refreshing to find, in a journal of academic psychology, such a witness to the quiet strength, patience, perseverence and serenity of spirit that is so common among mature black women in our society! How good to see the development of a positive psychology that considers the role of faith in the development of character and virtue! What a change from the predominant trends of psychology when I was a student in the 1960s! There were arguably three such that impacted the Catholic and Christian communities: the Freudian which was straightforward about its contempt for religion as a crutch and an irrationality; the humanist psychology of Rogers that idolized individual subjectivity, self-fulfillment and personal choice and implicitly/covertly, which is to say deceitfully, despised any restraints on the Imperial Self such as humility, obedience, chastity or piety; and there was Jung's gnostic cult of the deeper self which preached an alternative religious belief and practice but masqueraded as scientific psychology. Of the three, Freud was refreshing for his honesty and candor. A worthy, forthright opponent is of infinitely more worth than a deceitful and seductive "friend": Jung and Rogers (despite their valid contributions), in their pretense as an "enlightened Christianity," did far more to undermine faith   than did the blatant, militant atheism of Freud. Happily, Mattis emphasizes the role of intimate relationships with other women, especially the mother/daughter connection, in the vigorous spirituality of these women. It is here, however, that a dark shadow descends: Where are the men? The only reference to men is indirect as she sees the confrontation with patriarchy. The only masculinity here is the toxic, oppressive and hostile hegemony of the (bad) patriarch! No benevolent, supportive presence of father, grandfather, bridegroom, brother or male friend. To the extent that men are present, they are the enemy! Related to this is her important distinction between religion and spirituality: the former she understands to be adherence to the practices and beliefs of an organized religion, while the later is a more subjective activity by individual. She rightly says that they overlap each other and pledges to use the language of the participants in the study. But this reader was struck by the overwhelming predominance of spirituality over religion. Faith for these women, aside from intimate relationships with other women, is an activity by a single individual facing overwhelming adversity and supported by the Higher Power. There is no mention of sacrament, authority, tradition, priesthood, preaching, law, liturgy or ritual. Now religion (from the Latin "religio" meaning "bonds") has to do with the connections between people, in community here and now and also with the broader Church as well as our ancestors, descendants and all those who preceeded and follow us. These representative women have a deep, spontaneous, and intense closeness to a few women but apparently little meaningful connection to a broader community or the "masculine" world of objective, institutional religion. The later is implicitly viewed as hostile to the feminine spirit. Now it is true that women are by nature vastly more spiritual, open to the transcendent, compassionate, generous, and humble in their need for help from above. It is the men who are challenged in these arenas of compassion, generosity and piety. It is the men who desperately need a PROGRAM of laws, authority, tradition, ritual and discipline for them to develop a masculine spirituality as son of the Father, bridegroom of the woman, and father...above all as father. Despite the customary feminist reference to (bad) patriarchy, the world presented in this article is that of a matriarchy where the women care for each other and the children and defend themselves against the man. Spirituality as a heroic,  largely solitary project is seen as vastly superior to religion as formalized, impersonal, and oppressive. But it was NOT meant to be so: we were created for each other...men and women...to desire, and delight and reverence each other...to be charmed and fascinated and thrilled by each other...to tenderly care for and honor each other. The problem, of course, is not with the women, but with us men. These and similar women are amazing in their resourcefulness and resiliency. Femininity is a mysterious endowment of compassion, goodness, trust and humility! Women can and do live without men! They can and do live without organized religion! But it was not meant to be so! Men cannot live without women: we become vicious thugs or passive wimps! Jesus himself did not call women to be his disciples and apostles; rather they were spontaneously, without invitation, drawn to him (Mary Magdallen, Mary and Martha, all the women at the foot of the cross). But Jesus knew it was the men who needed a rigorous, intense period of mentorship and discipleship in order to become disciples, fathers, priests. And so today it is us men who similarly need spiritual fathers, fraternal fellowship, and rigorous progams of spiritual development...that we become the sons, brothers, bridegrooms and fathers (as well as uncles, cousins...) that our women deserve!

Sara

The name Sara or Sarah means "Princess or Noblewoman" and indicates a woman of dignity, elegance, influence and goodness. The scriptural Sarai had her name changed to Sarah by God in the life-changing covenant He established with Abraham and Sarah and seemed to strengthen the good and strong meanings of the name. Strangely (to us), she was half-sister (same father, different mother) and wife of Abraham. In that culture (and Muslim societies even today) the incest taboo was less rigid and allowed for such combinations of blood relationship and marriage. We see this reflected even in the love poetry of the Song of Solomon where the groom refers to his Beloved as his "sister"...something strange and dissonant for the modern ear. Her beauty was so extraordinary that Abraham made a habit of introducing her as his sister, not wife, lest his hosts kill him to possess her. Twice she cooperated, loyally and obediently, in order to save his life.  Both times she was accepted into the household of the hosts, Pharoh and Abimelech, in order to be wed. Both times God intervened to save her from defilement and her husband from death. The modern reader sees here perversion. But the ancient scripts are boldly free of moralism and of excuses:  she, and her husband, lie and risk adultery to save his life: period. It is not excused; it is not rationalized! These early texts are refreshing in their candor about the unvarnished failings of the protagonists:  what always emerges is God's gracious hand in delivering His people in spite of their glaring sins and failings. Here Sara can be seen as emblematic of so many women who are betrayed by their men but mysteriously protected by Another. Overall, perhaps the most striking quality of Sara is her loyalty to and deep communion with Abraham. Although polygamy was common at that time, especially for those as affluent as Abraham, they seem to have been monogamous. And she is faithful and close to him in all their adventures, including those we find morally abhorant. Her great curse, of course, was her infertility, the greatest deprivation an ancient woman could face. God had promised that they would be father and mother of many nations but she bore no children. Out of desperation, she gave Abraham her slave Hagar (clearly there were no other wives) who bore him Ismael. This act on their part showed a lack of faith in God's promise; but it did not frustrate His promise, which was slow but steady in coming. Hagar then has contempt for her mistress because of her barrenness and Sara responds in deep envy by getting Abraham's permission to mistreat the slave then who runs away. Here again we see the candor and honesty:  again she is far from praiseworthy but is significant, despite her moral failings, because she is God's chosen and He loves her.  She is also here a counter-example of insecurity, jealousy and resentment. Abraham, unable to resolve the conflict, reluctantly sends Hagar and his son Ishmael away. God, as usual, comes to the rescue and assures him that the two will be protected and also become mother and father of many nations (today's Muslim Arabs!) Later, Paul in Romans, will see her as an example in that God worked through her and her husband not through their own effort, exertion, will or goodness, but in their very poverty, weakness and barrenness through His great mercy. It is ironic however, that this icon of faith, like her husband, weakened and acted out of disbelief and distrust. She did this on another occasion at Mamre where the three mysterious strangers promised that she would be pregnant within a year and she laughed in contempt. Again, a failure in faith and yet God's plans were not frustrated by her unbelief! And so, she is emblematic for the poor in spirit, those who are unfruitful and even weak in faith and morals and who are nevertheless visited by Mercy from on high. This noble Beauty is far from perfect: indeed, she is deceitful, almost adulterous, jealous, resentful, weak in faith. Yet, she is fiercely and intimately loyal to her companion Abraham in the covenant, mission, a communion they share with God. The Bible says she lived to be 127 years old (a sign of greatness and goodness) and she was honorably buried by Abraham who was later buried with her...together even beyond death. Rabbinic legend has two versions of her death, both iconic of maternity and connected to the story of Abraham's (aborted) sacrifice of son Issac. According to the first, she died of sorrow at (mistaken) news of her son's death; in the second she dies of Joy upon learning that Issac was still alive. Surely, both versions point us to the sorrow of Mary(the Pieta) and her Joy at the Resurrection! Later in our Scripture, in the first letter of Peter, Sara is used an an example for women to adorn themselves, not with outward ornaments, but with inner qualities of quiet, gentleness, graciousness, generosity, and strength. This is not the contemporary ideal of an "empowered woman" where power is a mimesis of crude machismo strength as "force against force." Rather, this is a premonition of the influence, the inspiration, the encouragement and ennobling femininity we find quintessentially in Mary our Lady and Mother!

The Worldliness of our Holy Father

Our Holy Father's homily on Sunday's gospel about Lazarus was classic Francis: for the most part a gripping, illuminating spiritual reflection on the mysterious, blinding allure of "worldliness" as a kind of false consciousness, largely unrecognized by the victim, worse than sin as act since it is sin as condition. But then he gratuitously insults clergy who indulge the rich and indifferent as "pusillanimous." This word means, of course, "weak-spirited" in the sense of cowardly, unmanly, bereft of courage, backbone and spine. This is the worse insult you can give a man. Call me ugly, stupid, smelly, awkward or whatever you want and I will chuckle to myself; but call me a coward and I MUST fight you. If you are a man, you know what I mean! Why does our Pope express such visceral contempt for (not all of) the clergy? Of course there is truth to his view: we have experienced clergy who are complacent, indifferent, arrogant, detached from and indifferent to the "Lazarus" in our midst. But his tone is not compassionate or mournful; it is contemptuous. It is like the cartoon in which the psychologist responds to his patients confidence with: "You did what? That is disgusting!!!!" Clericalism, in the worst sense, is virtually constitutive of Catholicism because our sacramental economy requires a caste of priests, some of whom unfortunately configure the reverence they receive into arrogance, privilege and complacency. And so, its companion, anti-clericalism, is equally inevitable. But for our number one cleric to be so anti-clerical is unprecedented. A key to understanding may be our Pontiff's understanding of "worldliness" as false consciousness, often unrecognized. Perhaps we can see that Pope Francis himself is unaware of a "worldliness" that has infiltrated his own thinking. He seems to have interiorized an intense resentment of the privilege, arrogance, and complacency he sees among the clergy. This is striking in that he exaggerates mercy, in other areas, even at the risk of truth and justice. It is an attitude I have observed elsewhere: for example, a pastor who is kind and gentle with his flock but brutal with his curates.  This spirit of resentment seems to influence our Pope in other areas as well. It seems that he deeply identifies with the "Lazaruses" in our midst, but unlike the biblical figure who is silent and apparently serene, he is angry at the indulgent Dives. In regard to capitalism, he again despises those who are privileged, powerful and distanced from the poor. Again, his tone is not that of a pastor inviting repentance in the manner of the great saints; rather he seems distant, judgmental and disdainful. A third area, the most important in my view, of a subtle but unrecognized worldliness regards the rigorous, ennobling sexual Catholic ethos of the Church. This was given a new, fresh and inspiring in the teaching of St. John Paul II. Rather than continuing this legacy, Francis sympathizes with the view that the Church is oppressive, judgmental, and exclusive with its teaching and practice. He seems to have interiorized the contempt of the world towards the Church and is embarassed about the demanding, sanctifying ethos it offers. On the positive side, however, Pope Francis has a basic humility about himself as a sinner in need of God's mercy; he is genuinely a man of the poor; he is strikingly authentic and free; and basically a man of the Church committed to the Deposit of Faith (despite his irrepressible urge to admit those in non-sacramental unions to the Eucharist.) He is the weakest teaching Pope in my lifetime of seven pontiffs, but by historical standards he is not that bad. In this Year of Mercy we can only pray for mercy upon our fallible Pope, and the Lazaruses who suffer among us, and all us complacent Diveses.

Weeds and Wheat: The Civil Rights Movement Remembered

Having come of age during the Civil Rights Movement, I consider it the finest moment of our nation. Not only was the cause impeccably just, but the evangelical, non-violent modus operandi of the Reverend King and his lieutenants was courageous, ennobling, fierce yet gentle, and boundlessly generous. In captivating our hearts, it was marvelously successful: by the end of that tumultuous decade of the 60s, racial inclusion was passionately embraced by all our major cultural institutions: academia, the churches, media, entertainment, sports, the government, political parties and the law. Twenty years later, in the 90s, my employer UPS put all of us management through diversity training where we learned that profitability and global capitalism had zero tolerance for the faintest trace of bigotry. Racism, as a historical and institutional force, was deader than the dinosaur. No doubt there are residual traces among old timers and the unavoidable ethnic, tribal rivalries endemic to male adolescents (think the West Side Story). A type of racism that I personally find despicable is the current practice by hoodlum, black teens in the cities of northern NJ of mugging undocumented Latino workers who are flush with cash on payday Friday...but you will not learn about that on public television. Nevertheless,  culturally racism is as taboo as animal sacrifice. In all of the worlds I have inhabited in my adulthood, I am in the minority as a white...and quite comfortable surrounded by descendants from Africa, Asia and Latin America...in Jersey City, at UPS operations in Newark Airport, teaching in urban Catholic schools, in our own modest residence for low income women, and in the many urban Catholic churches I attend. However cultural movements are complex and contradictory, like us human beings ourselves, and never pure but always infected with sin. The weeds and the wheat, prior to the Second Coming of our Lord, cannot be definitively separated. And so I identify three significant, unfortunate consequences of the Civil Rights Movement: the sexual revolution, the concentration of power in the federal government and the cult of victimization. None of these three weeds were intrinsic to the Civil Rights Movement itself, which was wheat of finest quality, but they were deeply involved with it and thereby given impetus. It was an unholy intimacy. Regarding the sexual and cultural revolutions that accompanied the King movement: the wives of the black leaders, but few others, were painfully aware of the virulent promiscuity (particularly with young white women) of the leaders of the movement. There seems to have been an implicit but strong compact of compliance between the sexual liberals and the civil rights leaders and that coalition remains the inner core of the Democratic Party to this day. And so, in spite of the immense legal and political advances, the black family emerged from that decade in worse shape than it began and has been getting worse since. Despite almost 50 years of the easy availability of contraception, today 2/3 of black babies conceived in NYC are aborted. And Afro-Americans are flawlessly pro-choice! The second catastrophe that issued from the Civil Rights movement was the moral approval of concentration of power in the federal government. Local governance in the South was not able to correct the deeply-structured racism so the intervention from the higher power was necessary, correct and immensely successful. This moral success, which should be considered an exception to a wholesome federalism served to consecrate the concentration of power in the federal government (which was the result of many and various historical forces throughout the 20th century) and accelerated the decline of intermediary organizations and the loss of a sense of subsidiarity even among Catholics. And so, we have the atomizatiion of the individual, the emergence of a enveloping Mother-State, and the weakening of smaller social units including the family, church, and smaller social bodies. Lastly, we have the cult of victimization that pervades our culture as all kinds of minorities claim the sacred shroud of victimhood and compensatory entitlement. This blend of self-pity, jealousy and impotence is the starkest contradiction of the original Civil Rights Movement with its ethos of quiet strength, forgiveness, courage and hope. We do well to honor the memory of Reverend King who is in the company of a very elite group of American moral heroes including Lincoln, Ceasar Chavez and Bill W of the 12-step tradition: all notable for their humility, wisdom and courage. But we do well also to renounce the legacy of sexual license, centralization of power and the culture of victimization that has instituted itself in all our major cultural institutions and elites.

I Believe What I See!

“I believe what I see.” She said...with serene intelligence. She is a student of human psychology: a learner and a searcher, open-minded and sober in investigation, eager for meaning but thoroughly contemporary in her agnosticism and skepticism, especially about wild claims about the invisible, spiritual universe.

“I believe what I see.” This is good start, a wholesome and trusting empiricism: “I believe…” An act of faith, trust, belief! I believe what I see…I trust in my eyes …which are given to me to access what is real…and will show me what is actually there beyond my own mind.

This is already an act of faith: in my eyes, my mind, my natural capacities for perception, and the validity of my senses and intellect. This reflects a wholesome and naïve realism. Implicitly this involves a trust in Reality: that there is an objective reality beyond subjective experience which unveils itself, benevolently, to attentive eyes and inquiring intellects. After all, a deep suspicion and distrust would discredit the validity of one’s own perception and judgment: maybe I am dreaming, maybe I am deluded, maybe my deepest thoughts and convictions are entirely the result of cultural conditioning, of needs and desires, of my own peculiar and finite experience. It is a good start to trust one’s experience: to look, and think and question and listen and ponder…receptively, trustingly, gratefully.

Consider: every act of perception and cognition is already an interpretation, an intuition of meaning and purpose beyond the immediate, discrete sensory data. A stranger smiles at you in the street: you smile back, having received it trustingly; or you look away in defensive avoidance, or glare back angrily muttering “What do you think you are smiling at, stupid?” You arrive at your office on your birthday to find a bouquet of lovely flowers on your desk:  you are beaming with delight as you already have a sense of their origin and purpose. Indeed, the human mind is an unending search for meaning and purpose: what does that smile or this bouquet mean? What is it all about? What is the purpose of my life, of my yearnings, of my suffering?

And so the question is:  What do you see?

Do you see a bad infinity of hard molecules banging against each other senselessly? (Materialism?)

Do you see a cruel universe where the deepest human longing for love and meaning is ultimately frustrated? Where life is an endless battle between conflicting wills, frustrated egoisms and and vicious tribalisms? (Nietzsche?)

Do you see a futile cosmos that emerged senselessly from Nothing; that lacks any interior coherence or meaning; that is doomed eventually to disappear into that same Nothing? (Nihilism?)

Or: Do you see a marvelous world charged… gratuitously, serendipitously…. with splendor, surprise, and purpose?

Do you see the love and compassion that moves you as an image of an even greater, an infinite love and compassion that moves the stars and the atoms and the human heart?

Do you sense that the yearning that possesses your heart…and all human hearts…the desire to love and be loved TOTALLY…Do you sense that this longing is destined to be surpassed beyond its own limits?

What do you see? Cherish your agnosticism as an impetus to learn! Continue to look, to see, to question, to probe, to wonder, to marvel, to admire, to love, to thank, to pray (even if skeptically), to sacrifice, to exult and delight in Reality with all its Truth, Beauty and Goodness…and to Hope!

A Theological Style: Dulles and Guarino...Loyal, Receptive yet Rigorous, Modest, Detached

I was delighted that the theological work of our friend Fr. Tom Guarino was recognized by the Vatican naming him a monsignor.  I recalled a similar happy event when Fr. Avery Dulles was named a cardinal for the same reason. I think that Fr. Dulles was something of a mentor to Fr. Tom who has assumed leadership in the Catholic-Evangelical-Dialogue. I have found in them a similar and striking theological style that is at once:  fiercely loyal to the Church, open minded and yet rigorous in thought, detached from any particular theological approach, and modest in epistemological expectations.  Each shows a fierce filial loyalty to Christ’s Church as Mother and Magister in all elements starting with Scripture, Tradition, the magisterium and the testimony of the saints. Each practices “theology on the knees” albeit in a humble, unpretentious manner.  Secondly, they welcome dialogue with other faith traditions and a diversity of theological approaches even as they are precise and painstaking in analysis and wholesome criticism. For example, they will parse a papal statement to discern exactly what is and isn’t intended, not hesitating to point out limitations, but in a stance of loyalty and obedience.  Docility of the will is joined with clarity of the intellect. They welcome the positive insights of various approaches but identify the imbalances. Thirdly, and most interestingly for me:  they both seem detached from any particular theological approach. Neither seems committed to any thinker or school of thought. I suppose they are indebted, with all Catholic theology, to Thomas, Newman, DeLubac, and possibly Rahner and Ratzinger. But they seem detached: fully committed to the Church and her teaching but distant and free to accept and reject what they want from the competing schools of thought. They both favor a “models” approach which comes from Kuhn’s understanding of “paradigms” and is, I suggest, a soft Kantianism:  the “noumenal”,  the unapproachable Mystery of God and Heaven, is inaccessible, even if it is revealed, and our cognitive expressions are always inadequate and partial, if valid and necessary.  Theirs is a humble, modest and apophatic epistemology. We “know” God best when we know we are “not really knowing Him.”This is especially true of Guarino who is engaged with postmodern agnosticism and acutely aware of human knowing in its historicity, subjectivity, and enfleshed finitude.  I see three schools of theology competing in the Catholic Church today: a renewed, traditional Thomism; the conjugal mysticism of Balthasar, St. John Paul II, Benedict and their “communio” allies; and heirs of the transcendental (Kantian) Thomism of Rahner and Lonergan.  Dulles and Guarino do not surrender to any one approach but seem to borrow from each: they share a deep, prayerful spirituality with the romantic mystics but in a sober manner, without fascination for nuptial mystery as the very interiority of the Church. With the traditionalists they reverence the intellect in its capacity and orientation to truth even as they share with the Kantian-Thomists an awareness of subjectivity and finitude. They are more engaged with modern thought than the traditionalists, even as they renounce the slide of the Rahner/Lonergan heirs into an adulterous embrace of the most anti-Catholic aspects of modernity.  My own view is that Balthasar and  John Paul are the ones who directly, clearly and deeply answer the threat our age faces in regard to sexuality, family, gender and the very ontological reality of the Church as Bride of Christ. Dulles was the unrivaled dean of American Catholic Theology: admired by all even as he resisted the slide of much of the guild away from precious Catholic truths. Guarino continues his mission: educating generations of priests, dialoguing with Evangelicals in a time of crisis, and developing the Deposit of Faith. Guarino is a particularly gifted presenter: energetic, humorous, and virally contagious in his love for theology.  Deeply in love with Christ and his Church, broad and deep in scholarship, clear in thought, and zealous in search of Truth:  How blessed we are to have close to us such Fathers of the Church!