Entering Into the Heart
23 Mar 2011 2 Comments
in Catholic Tradition, God, Lectio Divina, Lent, Prayer, Spiritual Growth Tags: God, Lectio Divina, Lent, prayer
As we traverse the landscape of Lent, we seek to enter into the life of Jesus in a deeper and more personal way. We seek to unite ourselves, through him into the Oneness of God.
We seek to strengthen our prayer life as a means to this end. I am, as I’ve noted, engaging in Centering Prayer, but there are other methods that are thoroughly Christian, yet in their practice resemble, in the doing, traditions that are recognizable as Eastern in their essence.
One of these is the practice of lectio divina. Although it has been associated with Catholic practice, it is done by Episcopalians and I assume others who have found it to be a wonderful way of entering into scripture more fully.
It consists of four stages (not steps as Cynthia Bourgeault points out so clearly. *) The first is to select a passage of scripture, shorter rather than longer. (lectio) Read it prayerfully, aloud if possible. Perhaps a second reading. Second, bring your mind and feelings into the passage (meditatio). Ask questions, delve into the characters, identify what “grabs” you.
The third stage is prayer, inviting your feelings into a word or phrase until it begins to speak to you. (oratio) What is God saying to you? Allow insights to come, as scripture moves from your head to your heart. You move deeper into the phrase, as scripture comes alive in new meaning.
The fourth stage is a “resting in God” . Suspend the mind and emotions and remain quiet. (contemplatio). The Word joins the silence and is fully integrated.
This form of practice can be thrilling. We are cautioned that each day is different. We may move from stage 1 to 3, back to 2, or something different. We can spend more or less time at any stage. It can be a profound method with benefits that are numberous. We see into the scripture more fully, into ourselves more deeply and we connect in that unitive way with the divine. We come away with calmness, and connectiveness.
Give it a try, perhaps using portions of the Lenten readings of the day.
Amen.
*Cynthia Bourgeault says we should not consider lectio divina as a series of steps, because that creates a ladder in our minds, and tend to focus on the climb. Rather she suggests, we should consider it a wheel of stages, each entered into as long as needed or desired, moving fluidly to any other stage, perhaps returning, or not to any stage. There are no rules essentially.
**Taken from Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, by Cynthia Bourgeault, (Chicago: Cowley Publications) 2004
Will There Be Any Faith On Earth?
22 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in Biblical Study, Catholic Tradition, Catholicism, Dissent, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Magisterium, Social Justice, Theology Tags: bible, dogma, Faith, Jesus, Magisterium, social justice
“But when the Son of man comes, will he find any faith on earth?” (Lk 18:8)
Indeed, what a question. It asks the seminal question to all of us, and for me synthesized a number of things I read, making me wonder, just what is faith?
What does it mean to be faithful?
NCR in an article entitled, The Had-it Catholics” suggests that once you account for immigrants, the American Roman Catholic Church is bleeding followers at the same rate that all the mainline Protestant denominations are. And the reasons have surprisingly little to do with child abuse and contraception. They have more to do with marriage and divorce rules, homosexuality teachings, and ordination of women. We can discuss any of those issues, but what caught my eye was a fairly common comment that is made against “dissenters.”
It basically goes like this: If we have no settled doctrine to rely on, then we have nothing but what is the fashion of the day. I can as easily reject your “preferential option for the poor” as you reject church teaching on homosexuality. Where does it stop? To be Catholic is the accept this repository of faith as your foundation. No one is keeping you here.
This presupposes I would argue, that there is such a repository of faith that is sacrosanct as it were. Untouched in its basics since the resurrection at least, only added to as we come into a “fuller” understanding of truth. And many believe this is correct–they argue that there is perfect truth, unalterable, and knowable as such by everyone.
I daresay that every generation has thought it had the truth. Yet, civilization progresses over the eons and what was normative in 1350 C.E. is not necessarily so today in terms of moral behavior.
It denies as well, it seems to me, that the Holy Spirit works ever in the human race to help it, individually and collectively to understand who and what they are and what their life is to be. To suggest that even when majorities of faithful Catholics disagree with the Magisterium they are wrong by definition, is to deny that the Holy Spirit is active in the hearts and minds of each of us.
It is to deny, moreover, the value of the gift of intellect, or reason also gifted to us. Are we not to learn from the our pasts and to extrapolate anew, more inclusive morals for our future? Are we not to draw into sanctity all life as a higher level of love? All because such things were not contemplated in the past?
A few days ago, Enlightened Catholicism posted a report of a letter sent out by Archbishop Vigneron, to the Archdiocese of Detroit. It warned that all clergy and laity were prohibited from attending a meeting of The American Catholic Council scheduled to be held next year in Detroit. The Archbishop claims the groups beliefs are contrary to Catholic “Faith” and are contrary to the “spirit of Vatican II.” He said we should “shun efforts which threaten unity.”
Again we get the presumed “never-changing faith” claim. Does not the Archbishop know that this is not true? Moreover has he learned no lessons from the past?
Father Frederick J. Cwiekowski, in his book, The Beginnings of the Church, explained how modernism was condemned by the Inquisition, turned Holy Office in 1908. Modernism, meaning the use of modern methods of biblical exegesis such as form, text, redaction, and other forms of criticism. The determinations made by such methods were condemned.
Some of the claims of this new methodology were:
- The Gospels were not historical but teaching testimonials, interpretations by the evangelist of what Jesus said and taught.
- None of the evangelists were eye-witnesses, (Matthew and John) had been so taught)
- It questioned Christ’s anticipation of the emergent church.
- It questioned whether the apostles in fact knew of Christ’s deity before the resurrection.
The Pontifical Biblical Commission in the years 1905-1915 declared all these things in error and heretical. Such conclusions were bolstered by the encyclical On the Doctrines of the Modernists by Pius X, and again in Spiritus Paraclitus by Benedict XV in 1920.
Slowly things turned around after that, however, More openness was allowed and it was declared that such prohibitions only applied to faith and morals issues, in 1955. At the beginning of Vatican II, a working document, “On the Sources of Revelation” was issued to the bishops. Fully 60% rejected it, and although not the 2/3 required, John XXIII, sent it back for further work. When it was issued with Pius VI’s approval, the PBC, Instruction on the Historical Truth of the Bible, contained the following:
- The evangelists were witnesses not historians
- There is evidence they did not understand that Jesus was divine until after his resurrection. The apostles passed down what Jesus truly said and did, but it was later interpreted to the needs of the listeners of the Gospels.
- None of the evangelists were apostles and they adapted and synthesized the information at hand to the situation of the emergent church.
These became incorporated into the final document, the 1965, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, (art. 19).
There is no truth to the claim that once dogma always dogma.
So what is faith?
It seems to me, that faith, and being faithful is to be a constant student of what is taught by the Church and constantly to study what is being learned about the bible and its theological underpinnings. It is constant searching for truth, always following heart and mind, with careful and deep reflection.
It seems to me that we are all called to this work. It is simply not faithful to simply rely on an institution, no matter how revered as the sole determiner of all things moral and right. We, as Catholics, as Christians are obligated to seek truth ourselves.
Indeed, I do think there will be faith on Earth, Lord, as long as good people of strong believe ever seek to apply the issues of the day to the tenor of your teaching.
Like this:
Well, I’ll Be!
10 Oct 2010 6 Comments
in Catholic Tradition, Catholicism, Holy Spirit, Parish, Worship Tags: Catholic parish, God, Holy Spirit, old churches, ritual, stained glass, tradition, worship
There are four Catholic churches that I have designated as “possible” given my location. I went to the third on my list today.
I was expecting that it would be hands down my favorite. It is the oldest Roman Catholic church in Linn County, Iowa. The present building was built well before the 60′s.
It has the most beautiful old stained glass you can imagine. Gorgeous windows, some round, most in the traditional oval tops. They are pictures of various saints. I sat opposite St. Rose of Lima.
The pews are old, too short, so one is never quite comfortable. The altar was pulled off the original back wall and moved forward with lovely marble pillars arching behind and alongside it. The sanctuary actually is in the church, something that is rare these days.
There are actual statues gracing either side. It is thoroughly Marian, given its name, Church of the Immaculate Conception. It was dark.
It was in a word, just my cup of tea.
But.
I felt no welcoming when I entered. It seemed cold and withdraw as did its occupants. A rosary was being prayed, which was a plus, but I noted that many seemed to sit in sullen silence. The folks in front of me discarded phones and earphones on the seat to either side of them. Their teenage daughter stood with her foot perched upon the seat, looking as bored as any 14-year-old can be, being forced to be where she clearly did not want to be.
I was still hopeful of course, since I love this type of old church so much and usually feel my heart soaring to God upon my entrance. Yet this didn’t happen. I waited.
Things began, and I looked about and realized that this 9 am mass was the “white” mass. A mass at 12 noon was most certainly the Hispanic one – obvious since it was conducted in Spanish by the literature. Still, I expected more mixing and there was precious little.
Father is an exceptionally young man, looking at odds in such old surroundings. The parishioners are decidedly more elderly than young as well. This looks for all its worth as a parish that is in transition, the Anglos a dying out bunch, the Hispanics clearly in the ascendency.
All went as expected until the homily. Then I realized that this Church and I were probably not destined to know one another well. I suspected of course, given its Hispanic influence, that it would be fairly conservative. That has been my experience before in a Hispanic parish in Michigan.
There, at Our Lady of Guadalupe, I had been warmly welcomed, and had fallen in quickly. I was put to work serving coffee after Mass by the second visit, and I enjoyed a lively conversation with the priest there, who was native to Cuba. It was odd, him serving a largely Mexican heritage congregation. But all seemed happy there.
This conservatism was not of ritual however. That I expected. It had to do with what Father said. And it was that all of us fine church goers should be lively in our faith, and vote, calling our state to a Constitutional Convention, where we could enact a new amendment to “preserve traditional marriage.”
Quite a stretch in a homily devoted to how strangers turned out to be more faithful than the faithful.
No wine was served at communion, something I have never experienced before. There were no altar girls, but one woman served as a Eucharistic minister. A Catholic nun spoke for a few minutes encouraging everyone to support Birthright, an organization devoted to helping women with unwanted pregnancies, want them.
More than the usual number of folks received communion and kept on walking out the doors. Singing was lacklustre at best, and only one verse was sung of the exiting hymn.
It struck me mostly, as a lot of folks who have been going to mass for so many years that they frankly don’t think about it any more. They just do it. I felt no sense of awe, or Spirit within the building.
I, of course, don’t mean to speak for anyone there. What was going on in their hearts is between themselves and God.
I walked to my car with the strong conviction that I would not likely return, unless my “schedule” somehow made it easier to stop in there than elsewhere. They are the only church in town that holds a mass every day at noon. During Lent, they may have some choices of times that others don’t which might entice me there again. But it will be for convenience, and not because I feel “in God” while there.
I felt, decidedly as if I had missed a date with God today.
I found that odd.
Mostly I found it a shock. I guess ritual and building are a good deal less than I had thought.
If I’m Being Led by the Spirit, One of Us Has Been Drinking
02 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Catholic Tradition, Catholicism, Conversion, Feminist Theology, Jesus, Liberation Theology, Religious Communities, Theology Tags: Catholic Church, Catholicism, Christianity, feminism, Jesus, liberation theologies
Vemeer's "The Glass of Wine"
Given my rather erratic journey of faith, one would have to conclude that the Spirit can’t really be held responsible.
As any good convert, I was more Catholic than the Pope. It was important to believe everything as told, and to do everything right.
I actually did scour the books for the “correct” version of a prayer, which version of the Bible was “Catholic” and so forth, no Protestant stuff for me.
This went on for some time. I was leery of biblical scholars and theologians who were not Roman. I couldn’t trust them you see. They might not be giving me the “official” version.
As such, I was not concerned with the issues of celibacy and women’s ordination. I assumed my Church had good reason for this. I was for and against them respectively.
Of course, today, I laugh at such things. In fact, I started moving distinctly away from “doctrine” and official dogma once I started taking a Master’s program in Pastoral Ministry at a Catholic liberal arts college in Detroit. Happily I was introduced to all the fine theologies that were and are making the rounds–liberation, black, women’s, feminist, Latina, LGBTQ–the list gets longer by the day.
Some of it cut across the niceties of what I considered acceptable. I definitely disliked James Cone‘s Black Liberation Theology for instance. I too thought some of the feminist stuff was a bit too strident.
But time changes one. At least it did me. Now I respect and love Cone, and I have a big “go sista” to the feminist Christian movement. I recently read and reviewed New Feminist Christianity: Many Voices, Many Views, edited by Mary E. Hunt and Diann L. Neu. You can read a copy of it at my other blog AFeatherAdrift (please don’t mention this one–My Episcopal friends have no idea yet of my Catholic struggles).
I read it with fervor and joy, happy to see that feminist work is continuing and broadening in terms of subject and locale. As I said, once, I looked quite askance at this. But that was before I realized by gentle but helpful teachers, that God is diminished when we construct Her in this limited way, with hierarchies of power and leadership. A good healthy dose of good biblical exegesis helped hugely as well.
One of the things I learned from the book was that there is no “women’s voice” there are many, as the name suggests. There is no Latina voice, nor lesbian voice. We do not judge each other. For some women, leaving the Roman tradition is necessary. For others, like myself, it turns out to have been a mistake.
I can only speak for me. I am Catholic, and that informs much about me in the end. I choose to stand and oppose my faith on issues that I discern them to be wrong. I do it perhaps because my personality is confrontational, or perhaps for some other reason. But that is the path I am on, though it no doubt looks odd and troubling to others who know me.
Catholics on the extreme right had convinced me that I had no place in the Church. They were real and I was a “cafeteria” one, barely worthy of the name. I needed to go to a church that I found that agreed with my self-serving needs. I was contemptible.
But of course I was not gay, nor did I seriously want to be ordained. I am well past child-bearing, and thus I have no personal issue with abortion or birth control. My troubles with doctrine were heart felt, and supported by serious intellectual study and reflection.
What was worse, were the things they said about American Catholic universities and colleges (most of them that is) and about religious men and women (excluding of course ETWN). I was nothing but the product of “liberalized” nuns and priests who were never taught properly in the first place.
It is with deep sadness that I hear of the Vatican’s examination of religious men and women in the US, with a view to determining their degree of orthodoxy. It is a shame, since these men and women carry the lion’s share of the social justice work being done on behalf of Mother church. They present the Church as loving and concerned, as politically involved, and as caring for the least among us, something Jesus presented to us as our duty.
I am also deeply sad that on the Internet, there is a paucity of liberal Catholic blogging. I have searched with almost no success to find bloggers who are like myself, walking in the shadows of their faith, formally rejected, yet finding a vibrant welcome here and there. I believe with all my being that most Catholics are supportive of us.
It would be nice to be able to talk to others who struggle as I do.
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What Are We?
27 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
in Catechumenate, Catholic Tradition, Catholicism, Conversion Tags: Catechumenate, Catholicism, conversion, Mass, nuns, ritual
How to explain the inexplicable? It never ceases to amaze me how people of faith relate to their respective traditions. What thrills one, is anathema to another.
For one, the simplicity of the Quaker meeting room invites a strong presence of God, for others, like myself, nothing less than the full panoply of art and ritual will suffice.
This perhaps pertains to my earliest experiences as a child. I believe my first real church experience was attending a Catholic mass with my neighbors. The mother and several daughters went to St. Agnes in Flint. I was invited along, being probably ten or so.
I will never forget the splendor and mystery and magic of the place. Although it was summer and full daylight, inside it was dark. Filled with stained glass all around. It smelled different as well. Exotic would be the way I would describe it.
Women, dressed in long black dresses and long black headdresses walked about. When things began, the music was like no other I had ever heard. Deep, ponderous, and the voices rose in a crescendo of foreign words and phrases. Marching down the aisle were men, also dressed in a regalia of regal, long gowns. One carried a vessel from which smoke flowed. Golden crosses and boys with various other ornaments proceeded forth.
The altar area, still facing the wall, was alit with candles. People knelt and rose, and made crosses upon their bodies. They uttered unfamiliar words, and others responded, all in sing-song chants. I knew the language not, though it was of course Latin.
It all went on for a very long time and then people filed forward to open their mouths and have deposited upon their tongues “something.” They knelt and crossed, and what I later learned was genuflection.
None of this was really explained to me, but I pondered it for some time. Finding it all fascinating. When I asked why we didn’t go to “mass” I was told, “Because we are not Catholic.”
“What are we?”
“Methodist.” This was a lie, but I did not know.
Over the years to come, into my teens I was to have other Catholic friends. I marveled and asked curious questions about rosary beads, and white confirmation bibles, and mantillas, and missals. Nobody as I recall, seemed much interested in answering me. Taking for granted, what I began to secretly yearn for.
At fifteen, I decided to explore “my” faith tradition. I walked the half mile to a Methodist church one Sunday, dressed in my best. I entered and sat. I was encouraged to sign a book, and put money in a tray. I sang songs from a hymnal, and I listened to a man drone on interminably long about subjects that made little sense to me. We sang some more, and I went home.
I was very disappointed. I would remain so as the years went by. I envied my Catholic friends and so yearned to be like them. No one ever told me I could, except by some process whereby I must spend years sitting in the priest’s office answering questions and listening. Not true of course, but I had no way of knowing. It all seemed too daunting to me. And I knew of no one who had done so, and what does a young girl do on her own about things like that?
Not until I was in my 40′s did I mention this to a colleague of mine. “I wish I were Catholic,” I mused. She replied, “So become one.”
“But don’t you have to jump through a lot of hoops?”
“Yeah, so what? If you want to be Catholic, then go through it. You don’t have to BELIEVE everything you know, just go along with the program. Nobody believes all that junk. Everybody uses birth control even though we aren’t supposed to.”
Not the best of advice, but age had given me courage. So I called.
Wouldn’t you just know that I called smack dab in the middle of Lent. Sister Doris gently suggested that I might call her back after Easter when things were a bit less hectic. She took my name and number, evidence to me, that she would call me, if I failed. In the meantime, she encouraged me to start attending Mass.
So I did. And I went through the Catechumenate from September until the following June. And I loved it, and I love my Church, and I was the best Catholic in the world, as most new converts are. And I wanted to be a nun.
And then. Well, shit happens. . . .
