Douthat on Johnson
Luke Timothy Johnson’s article “Dry Bones: Why Religion Can’t Live Without Mysticism,” from the Feb. 26 “Spirituality Issue” of Commonweal, inspired today’s column from Ross Douthat in the New York Times. Like Fr. Imbelli (who blogged about the article here), Douthat quibbles with Johnson’s view that the mystical (or “esoteric”) dimension of religion is suffering from neglect.
Douthat observes (in some agreement with Johnson) that traditionally “esoteric” aspects of religion are growing in popularity, but divorced from their “exoteric” contexts: “In a sense, Americans seem to have done with mysticism what we’ve done with every other kind of human experience: We’ve democratized it, diversified it, and taken it mass market.” I wonder whether he also read Barbara Mujica’s article “Teresa of Avila: A Woman of Her Time, a Saint for Ours,” from the same issue. Mujica discusses the contemporary popularity of this particular mystic and considers what may be lost in embracing a too-narrow, ahistorical view of Teresa.
Today the tension between organized religion and personal faith is more prominent than ever. Many people turn to New Age cults to satisfy their spiritual longing, unaware that traditional religions do offer an alternative to the mechanized rituals that have come to be associated with them. Every year some of my students who have grown disillusioned with the institutional church read Teresa and exclaim, “I didn’t know this was part of Catholicism!”
Together, Johnson and Mujica’s articles explore some of the questions Douthat raises today. And of course, there’s more on these topics in our archives. Lawrence Cunningham’s February 2006 overview of “Catholic Spirituality” is worth revisiting, as is Luke Timothy Johnson’s own 2006 take on popular religion, “Keeping Spirituality Sane.” Is there anything else you think Douthat’s readers should check out while they’re here?
‘Every year some of my students who have grown disillusioned with the institutional church read Teresa and exclaim, “I didn’t know this was part of Catholicism!”
maybe it’s because all they hear is the BIG No coming from the ‘institutional’ Church.
Douthat notes that the mystical tradition includes *both* the contemplative practices and the ascetic ones, and that it is the ascetic that has been lost while contemplative practices have begun to flourish even among the unchurched. He then makes a plea for the ascetic.
No doubt he is right. But I also note that what seems to be flourishing among U. S. Catholics is Centering Prayer, Fr. John Main’s mantra practice, and a Catholic version of the Jesus Prayer, none of which require any ascetic practices but which seem to be of great spiritual benefit when practiced regularly.
Johnson notes that in the secular world ascetic practices are often considered patholigical. True, and I wonder whether the secular world is right about that, or mainly right. If masochism does produce extraordinary experiences of what is apparently the divine, does that mean that they are *truly* experienes of God? Some Catholic scholars of mystical experience (e.g., R. C. Zaehner and louis Gardet) don’t think so, and if I remember correctly there are some younger scholars who agree.
I know from my own experience as an adolescent that I was interested in contemplative prayer but was turned off by the extreme, even crazy practices of the mystics I read about. And I wonder how many others here were also turned off by them.
Perhaps the whole tradition needs re-examination by theologians and psychologists, with open minds on the part of both, How much of the required pain of a Christian life really called for in the contemplative domain?
Perhaps this is quibbling, but I don’t recall anything remotely approaching quibble in Fr. Imbelli’s blog entry.
The decline of monasteries in our time is a good thing. Monasteries and other esoteric practices occurred after the mainstream church sold out to empire and monarchy. Vatican 2 reminded us that everyone is called to holiness and that our life as a church, people of God, is integral to our interior life. Everyone should cultivate a personal relationship with God. But that relationship is surely fake if it forgets one’s neighbor who is everyone. Vatican 2 redirected us back to the gospel. Those into empire have tried after V2 to revert to the old feudal system.
Mark Proska,
Why the need to drive a wedge here, except for your usual contrarian response?
Alan C. Mitchell–
I was defending a contributor by pointing out an inaccurate and uncharitable characterization of his post.
In all honesty, don’t you think your comment is more wedge-driving than mine?
I should add, it was only uncharitable if intentional–it may wellhave been an honest mistake.
It may be useful to remind ourselves that th word “mysticism” is a modern word coined, if the late Michel deCerteau is correct, in the seventeenth century. John of the Cross did not know the word even though he knew “mystical theology” by which he meant “hidden discourse with God.” The adjective “mystical” was used of the sacraments, of the church, and of scripture – they all have a surface but within them are “hidden” realities.
The comments on monasticism by BM are risible. Jesus Is the Way but there are many ways to follow the Way, one of which is the monastic way.
Though I feel like a stranger in a strange land defending Bill M, I think he meant to say the decline of “the need for” monasteries is a good thing. I see a kernel of truth in that, but can’t really say I agree. Mirabile dictu, the cure (the rise of monasteries) made it better to have had the disease. Almost like the way vaccines work in the body. “By the Lord has this been done…” Why am I reminded again of that Cistercian monk Fr. Imbelli had quoted at the beginning of Lent?
I suppose if Larry C integrated his history with his theology he would get it.
Prof. Cunningham –
I know that my knowledge of the “dark” ages is all but non-existent, but just yesterday I read some spectacular reviews at Amazon of Peter Brown’s The Rise of Early Christendom. So I did some more checking then ordered it immediately.
His work sounds both revolutionary and extraordinarily competent. I”m particularly interested in his contrasting of Western and Eastern Christendom. I hope he gets into the differences between Eastern and Western mystical traditions. To me they are extremely different. Do you know if he gives that particular attention in any of his books?
I find it very encouraging that both the early medieval and later medieval periods are being reassessed generally. High time. The prejudice against the medievals, even at the Vatican, is alarming. I just read in the new blog recommended by Mr. Penalver that David Tracy thinks that in the middle ages mysticism and theology were “severed”. Yikes! And what. pray tell, about St. Bonaventure, the School of St. Victor, etc., etc., etc.?? Or does Tracy think that Bonaventure wasn’t aware of the ultimate incomprehensibility of God? I wish Tracy would finish that book.
Ann: I think that there must be some mistake in what Richard McBrien quotes David Tracy as saying about spirituality and theology being separated in “medieval scholasticism.” David is a very great admirer of Bonaventure and knows the Victorines as well. It was after its medieval heyday that differentiations began to be made, as between theology and philosophy, and moral theology from doctrinal, ascetical or mystical from systematic, etc. David also often quotes the work of Pierre Hadot who argues that ancient philosophy was not academic but a way of life, for which “spiritual exercises” were necessary, some of them, it seems, at the origin of the spiritual exercises we were taught in seminary, including simple adages such as “Live every day as if it were your last.” (I prefer the variant: “Live every day as if it were your first”–wonder all around!)
The reason for the rise of monasticism is that when the empire favored Christianity many people became Christians for political and economic reasons. Some historians term this period the “decline of Christianity” rather than the triumph. So many gravitated to the monastic life to recapture the Christian spirit. My point is that all Christians are called to holiness as V2 attempted to reinstate, as it were. Because beginning with the fourth century there were a vast amount of Christians in name, the distinction between lay and “clergy” began. Marcus calls this time, the “age of hypocrisy” which means that Christians in general began to venerate martyrs and relics to recapture the age of the martyrs. IOW holiness was no longer the goal but rather the veneration of holiness. Here is Marcus on the subject:
“As saints became ubiquitous, they also changed their functions. In the
early Christian community the living faithful prayed to God for their dead;
now the dead saint is asked to pray for the living: a whole new liturgy came
into being. As the martyr is , literally, detached from the place of his
martyrdom and made present wherever his relics have become the center of a
cult, so relics began to be seen in a new way…..relics soon became
themselves, the seats of holy power, God’s preferred channels for miraculous
action. A new nexus of social relationships centered around their shrines;
their cult provided ways of securing social cohesion in the locality, and
one of the means on which bishops depended to consolidate their authority.”
The Oxford History of Christianity.pg90.
Incidentally, I have made this point many times on this blog.
JAK –
Richard P. McBrien at the religiousleftLaw.com blog has this to say about David Gibson’s article about David Tracy:
“David Gibson describes Tracy as “riveted by the silence of God.” The problem his fellow theologians have created, Tracy believes, is that too many of them have “an obsession with content,” with the result that the content “has drowned out the silence.” Making doctrine central to theology has been “disastrous,” he declares.
“He is convinced that “theologians must reestablish the connection between spirituality and theology that was severed by medieval Scholasticism.”
“Before Vatican II, Tracy points out, “Spirituality became something you do after you do your theology.” I can testify from personal experience that this was, in fact, the operative assumption of much pre-conciliar seminary theology.”
Here is what David G. said in the Commonweal article:
“”Like Benedict, Tracy has always considered mystery indispensable to religion; “Religion’s closest cousin,” he insists, “is not rigid logic, but art.” He’s convinced that theologians must reestablish the connection between spirituality and theology that was severed by medieval Scholasticism. “It was a great disaster in the history of Christian theology,” he says ruefully. “And in the history of philosophy. Spirituality became something you do after you do your theology. It’s terrible.” “
I am currently offering a seminar entitled “Theology and Spirituality in the Thought of von Balthasar.” We began with the essay “The Unity of Theology and Spirituality” (found in his book, “Convergences: To the Source of the christian Mystery”). The essay offers a nuanced exploration of the sundering of theology and spirituality in the late Middle Ages and guide posts for their reintegration.
Ann: I was aware of your two quotes, but I still think some mistake was made in the conveying of David’s thought. He knows his Bonaventure and Aquinas.
JAK — Glad to hear it. These days the medievals are criticized from all sides in the Church, including the Pope, as too abstract. Pity. I must admit, however, that some of the medievals, with their apparent delight in violence and pain, can be very off-putting, and I just don’t think it’s Christian. So I can see why some theologians would reject those particular mystical theologians.
Complexity, complexity.
Ann & JAK et al: Just checking in here, and I’ll go back to my notes and tapes of my conversation with Father Tracy on that point. I thought I conveyed his point but there could have been some disconnect in our conversation, or in my brain. I’ll also see Tracy later this month when he gives a lecture at Sacred Heart U in Connecticut and will ask him about this point.
The separation of theology and spirituality begins, I think, in the late baroque period when scholastics begin writing separate manuals on ascetical or spiritual theology. It is that tendency that Balthasar and Rahner have tried to resist.
Apropos of monasticism: the term is an abstraction. Syriac monasticism has roots that go back before Constantine. Furthermore, Cappodocian monasticism is quite different from the Desert tradition which is quite different from what developed in the West where, to cite one example, the monastic life of Augustine’s community is not the same as that of Cassiodorus which is different than Benedict’s monastic vision which draws, as he says explicitly, on diverse ancients.To pontificate on “The Reason..” for monasticism is, to repeat, risible.
As Prof. Cunningham pointed out above, the word “mysticism” and its related form “mystical’ historically have had many meanings. And Jean points out that for kids these days “mystical” connotes New Age stuff. (I use the word “stuff” advisedly because the term “New Age” is also associated with a swamp of different meanings.) These days the word “spirituality” is also in common use, generally signifying, i think, anything to do with anything that transcends the sensate or hedonistic. Add to that the common distinction between “spirituality” and “religion”, plus the use of “religiosity” as a negative form of “religious”. So it’s very easy to miss just what the other fellow is talking about when the subject is spirituality/mysticism/religion/etc.
I don’t know how to tame this semantic jungle, but it needs attention.
Marcus, Brown and others have explained the reasons for monasticism. I learnde from them. They explain that religious orders arose because of the splintered Christian community which now had many political Christians rather than those who were committed to the faith. Christianity began its journey to Empire which it has continued to this day. V2 attempted to reinstate equality of holiness stating that all are called to holiness not a select few. Nonetheless, the clergy still are trying to separate themselves as a privileged class even tho its numbers and its credibility are declining. Unfortunately leaders of the church are still into empire which began in the fateful fourth century when the bishops caved in for the power and glory. That is not risible at all. It is deplorable.