Christians without backbones
Animals Without Backbones is the title of a book used for generations in college biology courses. A website on its new edition says that it was “considered a classic among biology textbooks since it was first published to great acclaim in 1938. It was the first biology textbook ever reviewed by Time and was also featured with illustrations in Life.” I don’t remember whether we used it in my college courses, but the name was familiar to me and returned to my consciousness when I read a paragraph in a book of conversations with Fr. Yves Congar that appeared in a work published late in his life under the title Entretiens d’automne. The context was a question about Vatican II and the Church’s encounter with modernity. Congar was of the view that the ecclesial crisis, which he dates, by the way as beginning around 1950) could be described as “the departure from Tridentinism [or ‘Trentism’],” a term that he borrowed from Giuseppe Alberigo, that he distinguished from the Council of Trent itself, and by which he meant a system constructed after the Trent. Congar describes it: “It is a system that included absolutely everything: theology, ethics, Christian behavior, religious practice, the liturgy, the organization, Roman centralization, the constant intervention of the Roman congregations in the life of the Church, etc.” Departure from it he describes as “the progressive dismantling of a framework that inserted people into a complete system under the authority of priests. This process began long before the Council….” Then comes this paragraph:
We have not yet sufficiently communicated, or developed, the positive biblical grounds on which a new chapter in the history of the Church has really begun, in continuity, however, with the living tradition of the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the classic centuries. The fate of the Church, it seems to me, is more and more tied to a spiritual and even a supernatural life, that is, to a Christian life. I think that today the only ones who can stick it out [tenir le coup] are Christians who have an inner life. In Tridentinism, there was a kind of conditioning (in a non-pejorative sense); there was a sort of enveloping, of a framework that one entered or stayed within, whereas today…, it is impossible, I think, to maintain a Christian life without some kind of inner life. And here I like to cite a rather curious remark of Fr. Emile Mersch, that Belgian Jesuit who did so much for the theology of the Mystical Body: “It’s because they lack a skeleton that certain animals surround themselves with a carapace.: Today I think the great carapace of Tridentinism has in great part dissolved, flaked off in some way, so that the need for a kind of inner frame is very urgent.
The metaphors give rise to thought. With the carapace one thinks of the defensive mode in which the Catholic Church confronted the successive waves that would produce the distinctively modern world. The result was what Congar called “the system,” always carefully distinguishing it from the Church itself, in which everything was already, to use a term that Congar often used pejoratively, ready-made. It was that carapace, that shell, that was revealed to have dissolved, flaked off, thus precipitating the crisis within the Church.
Reading his comment that only Christians with an inner, spiritual, Christian life will survive the crisis, some will be reminded of Karl Rahner’s comment that “the Christian of the future will by a mystic or will not be at all.” Here the other metaphor, borrowed from Mersch, comes into play, that of a skeleton. Today there is a tendency to get all squishy when talking about the inner life or “spirituality” (in its new meaning). Congar uses Mersch’s metaphor to refer to the inner Christian life as providing the skeleton, the backbone, that enables one to survive in a secularized world and makes it unnecessary to develop a hard outer shell. Christians without backbones are not going to make it.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=3640934
Brilliant! And useful. Thank you for posting this.
I think a great many of us go through life as pious (or semi-pious) agnostics.
Guilty as charged way too much of the time.
So relevant to what we see today. It is hopeful really.
Thank you.
We’ll hear the story of Martha and Mary – ‘she has chosen the better part’ – this weekend. How timely this intriguing reflection is!
A sociologist friend (a “former Catholic”) theorizes that Catholics immediately after the Council were ready to accept anything they were told for exactly this reason: they had no habit of discernment. They accepted the new “system” just as they had been accustomed to accepting the old system, without any question.
That is your story, Kathy, but it does not ring true in my experience. Most folks who implemented Vatican II changes can relay stories that cover the continuum – parishes or segments of parishes that openly welcomed changes, etc. and parishes, individuals, groups that resisted and tore parishes apart because they had no “habit of learning, understanding, or asking questions of their faith, church, etc.”
Typical response examples – that is not what sister taught me; that is not what my mother taught me; you don’t know what you are talking about, etc.
Simplifying, we need to move towards an adult faith – which questions; seeks understanding, and does not easily or just allow an institution or “expert” or “cleric” to make up our minds for us. Unfortunately for most of us educated prior to Vatican II, this point was not emphasized. Look at how often on this dotCommonweal blog we have such extreme differences in defining what “obedience” means.
For a bit of humor, reminded of the joke that when a priest is consecrated bishop, they remove his backbone.
At first hearing the image seem to capture something. Certainly it seem that some people have been hard at work restoring the carapace and I suspect they are quite convinced that there are simple souls that deserve the protection and assurance that it provides.
Joseph – think EWTN, LC/RC, Opus Dei.
All right, there may be some people that we think are seeking a carapace, but why don’t we concentrate on the development of our own spiritual backbone. amd what that might mean for us?
Thanks, Joe. The comments on “the system” remind me of a turning point in the life of the young Heidegger, here quoted from an unpublished paper on Voegelin and Heidegger on Augustine for the Eric Voegelin Society of the APSA meeting a couple of years ago. I believe Congar gives us an important clue to its meaning/
“Heidegger’s pivotal encounter with Augustine, took place during the years 1919-1927, following his break from “the system of Catholicism.” Heidegger’s biographers Hugo Ott and Rüdiger Safranski support Nicholas Boyle’s statement that “in the aftermath of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf against the Church the air of the second-rate, rightly or wrongly, still hung about Catholic institutions, and ambition in the end meant more to the young Heidegger than faith. By going over to a nominal Lutheranism, he secured a position at the heart of the intellectual establishment of the Weimar Republic.” But this is only partially true. His reading of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Dilthey, Franz Overbeck gave Heidegger experientially based and intellectually motivated questions about the Church and its teachings. In 1919 he made the oft-quoted statement in a letter to Engelbert Krebs that “epistemological insights, groping toward a theory of historical knowing, … (have) made the system of Catholicism problematic and untenable—but not Christianity and metaphysics, yet these at least in a new sense.” It implies that what became problematic for him was not Christianity as such, but the Roman Catholic version of it he experienced himself.”
One of the advantages of having an internal skeleton–a backbone, if you will, is that it enables possibility of having certain flexibility that an exoskeleton doesn’t provide–joints, ligaments, and muscles that enable movement as well as confer structure and stability.
I broke my ankle quite horribly about a year ago. The bone strength came back after about four months. I’m still working on flexibility.
Controlled flexibility takes a lot of work.
Sorry, Fr. K. Will continue to work on my “controlled flexibility” but I do love Mr. Lawrence retelling about Heiddegger.
When I hear about people leaving the church in large numbers, I think this is part of the reason why: because of the pre-V2 system, they never had a skeleton, or because they turn to Protestantism to develop the skeleton. I don’t blame them for this. It is a failure of us, the church. On the hopeful side, we probably had to give up the shell to build the backbone.
How do we get a backbone? We need a spirituality for everyday life.
Mr. Lawrence –
Since the evidence keeps piling up that Heidegger was at least a Nazi sympathizer, I won’t worry very much about his particular notion of the system” of Christianity.
“…why don’t we concentrate on the development of our own spiritual backbone. amd what that might mean for us?”
I suupose one of the perennial responses to this question is lectio divina, the habit of prayerful reading of Scripture.
It seems to me that Congar had clear criteria for discerning what constituted the substance of the faith, the apostolic “regula fidei.” Thus he could distinguish shell and skeleton, system and Church. I suspect that what for him were “givens,” have become in the minds of many merely “quaestiones disputatae.”
Indeed, his moving reflections end with the Lord’s haunting question: “When the Son of Man returns, will he still find faith on the earth?”
Rahner immediately clarifies that by mysticism he does not mean “singular parapsychological phenomena, but a genuine experience of God emerging from the very heart of our existence,” and this because as Scripture and Church teach, “the ultimate conviction and decision of faith comes in the last resort, not from a pedagogical indoctrination from outside, supported by public opinion in secular society or in the Church, nor from a merely rational argumentation of fundamental theology, but from the experience of God, of his Spirit, of his freedom, bursting out of the very heart of human existence and able to be really experienced there, even though this experience cannot be wholly a matter for reflection or be verbally objectified.” It is only in the light of this experience of God, which is the real basic phenomenon of spirituality, that theological indoctrination by Scripture and the Church’s teaching acquires its ultimate credibility and existential enforceability” (Th. Inv., XX, 149-50).
Much of this reminds one of Augustine’s teaching on “the inner Teacher” without whom other teachers, including preachers, teach in vain, of Aquinas’s anti-Pelagian view that the primary cause of faith is the inner instinct of the Holy Spirit, and of Vatican I’s teaching on the inner movement and illumination of grace in the act of faith.
The last of five elements of this spirituality of the future, however, prevents Rahner’s remark from being received as expressing what Charles Taylor has called “the new individualism.” The spirituality that Rahner is talking about, he says, “will have a new ecclesial aspect”; as always, “we are talking about a spirituality rooted in a common faith and always to be sacramentally realized.” But this will differ from the ecclesial aspect commonly experienced during the previous 150 years, when the Church could be “regarded as our natural home, sustaining and sheltering us in our spirituality…. The Church supported us; it did not need to be supported by us.” Then he offers this contrast:
“Today all this is different. We do not see the Church so much as the ‘sign raised among the nations,’ as it was acclaimed at the First Vatican Council. What we now see is the poor Church of sinners, the tent of the pilgrim people of God, pitched in the desert and shaken by all the storms of history; the Church laboriously seeking its way into the future, groping and suffering many internal afflictions, striving over and over again to make sure of its faith; we are aware of a Church of internal tensions and conflicts; we feel burdened in the Church both by the reactionary callousness of the institutional factor and by the reckless modernism that threatens to squander the sacred heritage of faith and to destroy the memory of its historical experience. The Church can be an oppressive burden for the individual’s spirituality by doctrinalism, legalism, and ritualism, to which true spirituality, if it really is authentic and genuine, can have no positive relationship. But none of this can dispense the individual’s spirituality from having an ecclesial character…, one that bears and endures as a matter of course the misery and inadequacy of the Church….
“This kind of attachment to the Church must be part also of the spirituality of the future. Otherwise it is elitist arrogance and a form of unbelief, failing to grasp that the holy Word of God has come into the flesh of the world and sanctifies this world by taking on himself the sin of the world and also of the Church. The ecclesial aspect of the spirituality of the future will be less triumphalistic than formerly. But attachment to the Church will also in the future be an absolutely necessary criterion for genuine spirituality: patience with the Church’s form of a servant in the future also is an indispensable way into God’s freedom, since, if we do not follow this way, we shall eventually get no further than our own arbitrary opinions and the uncertainties of our own life selfishly caught up in itself” (ibid., 152-53).
[I do wonder about the translation at several points, but I don’t have access to the German original.]
Fr. Komonchak, thank you for recalling Yves Congar to us. He is always someone deserving of attention. Also thank you for this passage from Rahner.
How do these two references guide us toward developing an appropriate “backbone?”
Surely it it right that we cannot develop it apart from praying and thinking with the Church. But just what does it mean today to think with the Church?
If I am not mistaken, the USCCB is now laying heavy stress on obedience, even obedience about how moral principles ought to be given expression in public political policy. Unless my memory fails me, Fr. Brian Hehir, certainly a well qualified scholar, disagreed with the USCCB about the recent health care law. So have some Jesuits writing in America. Apparently the nuns who lead the Catholic Hospital Association have been chastised both in the United States and in Rome for their “disobedience” to the USCCB about the health care legislation. For my own part, I have written to our local bishop about the statement issued by the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference’s defending the USCCB’s position on the health care legislation and attacking as “so-called Catholic” the CHA. The reply I received from the Conference director simply reiterated flawed arguments and said that good Catholics should follow their bishopps lead in when they spoke on such issues of public policy.
Does backbone require, as Fr. Imbelli seems to suggest, that we lay people shape up and fall in line behind the bishops? Or does it require something else?
For my part, at my age and with all the limitations of my knowledge, I surely don’t want to waste time trying to argue with bishops and their followers about these matters. They show no interest in what people like Fr. Hehir have to say. Why would I think that they would care what I say?
So, what’s backbone for someone like me, apaart from the obvious part of praying and worshiping in and with the Church?
Bernard,
I don’t mean to be a smart aleck with this question; it is a live question for me and one I find truly baffling. Why would someone put faith in Fr. Hehir, but not in bishops? Are there experts? What makes them experts? I ask this as someone who is very skeptical. I read dozens of gardening books before I believe any single piece of advice about planting cover crops, for example. In my life I have never heard a theology or philosophy lecture that I agreed with 100%.
For me, a habit of active engagement and “show me the money” stance regarding experts is part of the ascetism of ecclesial unity. The same asceticism leads me to pray for bishops and to try to understand their role in my conscience formation. My bishop is my pastor. Is he always right or holy? No. But there are certain privileged aspects of life in which he has the duty to teach. He could neglect his duty or go beyond its parameters, but it’s his duty to teach in those areas and my duty to listen. According to the canons, it is also my duty to engage the bishop with respectful criticism.
Kathy, the issue, as I see it, is whether the USCCB will acknowledge that when they decide to promote one public policy position among others that are not unquestionably immoral it is prepared to have dissenters who are not labeled somehow disobedient. Fr. Hehir serves as an example of a competent voice who reached a different conclusion than the USCCB. Does he have to yield, not in the name of good arguments but in the name of “preserving solidarity with the bishops,” or in other words by reaon of required obedience.
Does the bishops authority to command extend to having the right to require obedience about the political application of moral principles when the alternatives to their position do not themselves violate any settled moral principle?
If one says that the bishops do have this kind of authority, then must one not say that the bishops could rightly command Catholics to support some political platform and, pe3rhaps, some political party that espoused that platform?
that this possibility is unlikely does not solve the issue. Remember the Center Party in Germany.
Even more, how would one explain the proper role of the laity that Lumen Gentium sets forth especially in paragraphs 30 ff?
Bernard,
I realize that there is a dispute about whether the alternatives to the bishops’ position violated any settled moral principle. If in fact there were no question about it, that is to say, if there were clearly and certainly no violation of an important moral principle, then no, I don’t think obedience could be commanded.
However, I think having a “settled” moral principle might be too much to ask. I don’t think moral principles will always be settled in time to act on them, especially given the speed of technology. Sometimes bishops will have to go out on a prophetic limb, and I do think that they would deserve a respectful hearing.
Catholic bishops may sometimes seem to be favoring the political party whose platform most resembles their own. Some time ago I looked up the Catholic Conference in my state to see what the issues were. The Conference’s issues, by number, were evenly split between Democrat and Republican perspectives. Numbers are not the entire answer, though, with issues. Gravity signifies.
Perhaps you mean this section of LG paragraph 36 in particular (emphasis mine):
The faithful must, then, recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God. Even by their secular activity they must aid one another to greater holiness of life, so that the world may be filled with the spirit of Christ and may the more effectively attain its destiny in justice, in love and in peace. The laity enjoy a principle role in the universal fulfilment of this task. Therefore, by their competence in secular disciplines and by their activity, interiorly raised up by grace, let them work earnestly in order that created goods through human labour, technical skill and civil culture may serve the utility of all men according to the plan of the creator and the light of his word. May these goods be more suitably distributed among all men and in their own way may they be conducive to universal progress in human and Christian liberty. Thus, through the members of the Church, will Christ increasingly illuminate the whole of human society with his saving light.
Moreover, by uniting their forces, let the laity so remedy the institutions and conditions of the world when the latter are an inducement to sin, that these may be conformed to the norms of justice, favouring rather than hindering the practice of virtue. By so doing they will impregnate culture and human works with a moral value. In this way the field of the world is better prepared for the seed of the divine word and the doors of the Church are opened more widely through which the message of peace may enter the world.
Because of the very economy of salvation the faithful should learn to distinguish carefully between the rights and the duties which they have as belonging to the Church and those which fall to them as members of the human society. They will strive to unite the two harmoniously, remembering that in every temporal affair they are to be guided by a Christian conscience, since not even in temporal business may any human activity be withdrawn from God’s dominion. In our times it is most necessary that this distinction and harmony should shine forth as clearly as possible in the manner in which the faithful act, in order that the mission of the Church may correspond more fully with the special circumstances of the world today. But just as it must be recognized that the terrestrial city, rightly concerned with secular affairs, is governed by its own principles, thus also the ominous doctrine which seeks to build society with no regard for religion, and attacks and utterly destroys the religious liberty of its citizens, is rightly to be rejected
OK, that’s enough on bishops and Fr. Hehir on a particular issue. Giving a respectful hearing to bishops is part of an ecclesial spirituality, but that, as you weem both to agree, need not mean agreeing with particular moral assessments or policies. Now can we get back to other dimensions? It is always discouraging to me to see what ought to be a discussion of the Church turn into a discussion of bishops or pope or clergy.
JAK –
Thanks for the Rahner. “The Faith” and “the Church” aren’t exactly the same thing, and we need to be reminded of it.
“Does the bishops authority to command extend to having the right to require obedience about the political application of moral principles when the alternatives to their position do not themselves violate any settled moral principle?”
Thanks, Bernard. Extremely important question.
Fair enough, Fr. Komonchak. But may I ask you for some direction about what you have in mind when talking about developing a proper Catholic backbone. Clearly prayer and worship in and with the Catholic community are of the essence. What else might be?
Fr. Komonchak, Kathy, et al,
Paragraphs 30 ff of Lumen Gentium are, I take it, very important. But they are not self-interpreting. So far as I know (and that’s not all that far), there has been little commentary about what these paragraphs ought to mean in the life of the Church, especially in the rrelationships between clergy and laity.
I take it that if the “backbone” metaphor has any bite, then the interpretation of these paragraphs is quite germane to specifying just what that bite is. I mysely cannot recall ever having these paragraphs discussed at in any paastoral way. No sermons, no pieces in my diocesan paper, no conferences accessible to us “non-specialists.”
I would deeply appreciate any references to relevant material that might be accessible to us ordinary laity.
Mr. Dauenhauer – excellent questions. Here is an example of differences being articulated in a national meeting in Australia. Interesting differences in opinions, direction of the church, roles in the church, etc. Not sure we would ever see this in the US.
http://blogs.abc.net.au/localradio/2010/07/is-the-national-council-of-priests-ready-to-blow-up-the-world.html
Wonder if this is an indication of a “growing” backbone?
Thanks, Bill, for this link. But this report really doesn’t say much about what are appropriate initiatives for lay people to undertake or about what sort of preparation lay people ought to be provided with so that their initiatives are likely to be well conceived. I take it that Lumen Gentium really does call for some significant lay initiative as something the church needs if it is to fulfill its mission. But as I said above, i haven’t seen evidence that the church leadership has thought much about this, much less done much.
Backbone talk is all well and good. reference to Congar and Rahner is also well and good. After all, Congar had a huge role in emphasizing the theology of the laity. But now, who tries to think about what that theology means on the ground? I hope that there are some people working on these issues, but if there are, they have little or no visibility. Unless of course, we’re supposed to take Opus Dei, Regnum Christi, etc as the way forward. I hope that’s not the case.
Here’s a barely baked thought. Each year there is a cadre of college graduates that volunteer with programs run by the Jesuits, Franciscans, and other religious communities for a year-long service program. Why not (a) incorporzte into this year some formation for lay leadership, (b) keep track of these people after they finish their year of service and encourage them to meet periodically to continue to think about how to serve the Church’s mission to the world, (c) set up in each diocese a program for these people, providing them with the spiritual guidance of a first-rate chaplain , someone who doesn’t try to “run” their activities, but who helps them pray and think along with the Church, (d) give them visibility as examples of lay leadership, of people who continue to grow during their careers into the kind of thoughtful lay people the Church needs.
Of course, if this were done right, the clergy would have to take these people, and others whom they would attract to work with them, quite seriously. The clergy would have to be ready to do some serious listening and to be willing really to converse. These diocesan programs could spill over into parishes and thus develop a broader base of informed and involved lay people.
Obviously, this outline is so sketchy that it would have to be fleshed out by people who know how to do such things. But if therre were anything like this, there sure would be some changes in “that ol’ time religion.”
Bernard: I’m not neglecting your questions; I’ve been busy with other things. Meanwhile, your last post is a good example of lay initiative.
Bernard – am very familiar with the Vincentian lay organization based in St. Louis. They do take graduates (usually MA graduates) for a year (average between 8-12 participants annually). They are placed in church institutions that provide services to low income, homeless, day care/schools in very poor neighborhoods, eldercare in poor housing developments. They live in a community and mirror some of the life that you would find in a religious community.
The graduates (alumni) are tracked and come back for reunions. Newsletters frequently report what they are now doing in terms of marriage, jobs, church involvement. Most seem to have ingrained the church community aspects of their year long initiative and this carries over to their lives – some become parish ministers running outreach or teaching, etc. They participate in school/parish boards, etc.
Would not leave out VOTF, SNAP, and other lay initiatives – I do think that these need to be strengthened but realize that some bishops (most?) are threatened by these groups – some deny the use of church property for meetings, etc. The fear of lay involvment runs deep in our episcopal brothers.
Thanks, Fr. Komonchak and Bill DeHass. Anything else either of you have to say, or anybody else for that matter, I’ll welcome.
Mostly lurking here and trying not to meddle in an interesting discussion, but it struck me that most people seemed to be looking at “backbone building” as an individual activity (reading Scripture, praying, etc.), whereas Bernard seems to be suggesting that the church build a collective backbone of inspired lay people, which takes the topic in another, but equally worthy, direction.
I’m also interested in the notion of that backbone-making “inner life” described above and how others understand what that means.
I remembered this thread when reading the psalm for this Sunday:
“When I called you answered me;
you built up strength within me.”