Thomas Merton's Contemplative Struggle:
Bridging the Abyss to Find Freedom
by George A. Kilcourse, Jr.
Thirty years after his death, how does one gauge Thomas Merton's continuing appeal? On
October 4, 1998, his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, achieved the
status of a modern classic, still in print on its fiftieth anniversary and available in a
handful of translations. Dozens of his other books reappear in new printings. Most
recently, HarperSanFrancisco published seven volumes of Merton's complete journals, the
bulk of them previously restricted material. Only a decade ago, five volumes of his
correspondence provided a strikingly honest and revealing supplement both to the Merton
canon and to his public persona. Scores of his conferences for the novices at the Abbey of
Gethsemani are available on audio tapes.
Thomas Merton's audience does not compete with the multiple millions who read
M. Scott Peck's spiritual best-sellers. Nor do Merton book sales rival the phenomenal
appeal of Kathleen Norris's books and their monastic ethos. Even Henri Nouwen's popular
and highly personal writings occupy a successful niche of spirituality quite distinct from
Merton's -- although Nouwen's The Genesee Diary was a Merton look-alike. Anthony
de Mello's voice, still attractive to a wide readership after his death, differs markedly
from that of the Kentucky Trappist (Cistercian) monk. But Merton has been around for a
long time. What explains his unique appeal and staying-power? Perhaps he personifies, as
no one else in the second half of the twentieth century, the integrity of being rooted in
religious tradition while restlessly seeking dialog. Merton's appeal grows, I think, from
a Catholic genius for embracing the truth no matter where he found it.
In an early review of Merton's poetry, Robert Lowell puzzled over the fact that
"the poet would appear to be more phenomenal than the poetry."(1) This mystique of Merton-the-cloistered-monk lingers. Yet it proves
ironic because few late twentieth-century monks did more to redefine the monastic vocation
or to banish the romantic paradigm of the hooded recluse leaving the world in contempt and
scorn. It was a caricature to which the young Merton had contributed but one that he
conscientiously (and bluntly) came to reject.
I have myself become a sort of stereotype of the world-denying contemplative -- the man
who spurned New York, spat on Chicago, and tromped on Louisville, heading for the woods
with Thoreau in one pocket, John of the Cross in another, and holding the Bible open at
the Apocalypse. This personal stereotype is probably my own fault, and it is something I
have tried to demolish on occasion.(2)
Forty years ago Merton recorded a visionary insight at the bustling downtown Louisville
corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets. It gauged the distance he had traveled since his
entrance into the monastery and reoriented his readers to appreciate his writings and his
life during the final decade. Merton observed how the context had changed. "[W]earing
a special costume and following a quaint observance," he argued, might now mean
"I am dedicating my life to an illusion." It was virtually the eve of the
election of Pope John XXIII, and Merton himself was prescient about the impulse for
renewal in the Catholic tradition:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping
district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those
people. . . . even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from
a dream of separateness. . . The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is
a dream. . . Not that I question the reality of my vocation, or of my monastic
life: but the conception of "separation from the world" that we have in the
monastery too easily presents itself as a complete illusion. . .(3)
In 1965, as Merton began living full-time in the hermitage at Gethsemani, he wrote more
freely about his deepening contemplative life. He had changed his voice, insisting that
"I speak not as the author of The Seven Storey Mountain, which seemingly a
lot of people have read, but as the author of more recent essays and poems which," he
lamented, "apparently very few people have read." He claimed that it was unfair
to caricature him as a "petulant, modern [St.] Jerome" hiding out in his cave
and never getting over "the fact that he could give up beer."
"I drink beer whenever I can get my hands on any," Merton confessed. "I
love beer, and by that very fact, the world." But even in the hermitage, Merton
struggled with other people's infatuation with his hermit identity.
In an age where there is much talk about "being yourself" I reserve to myself
the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of
my being anybody else. Rather, it seems to me that when one is too intent on "being
himself" he runs the risk of impersonating a shadow. . . I am accused of
living in the woods like Thoreau instead of living in the desert like St. John the
Baptist. All I can answer is that I am not living "like anybody." Or
"unlike anybody." We all live somehow or other, and that's that. It is a
compelling necessity for me to be free to embrace the necessity of my own nature.(4)
Merton's monastic vocation unfolded in ways that manifested a deeper, more assured and
authentic monastic sensibility. That mature sensibility prompted him to embrace the hermit
life and finally to seek kindred spirits by traveling to dialogue with distant Buddhist
monks in Asia. As his journals chronicle, he found more and more fault with the purely
juridical contemplatives who lived a devout regimen in the monastery but reduced the
charism to purely external observances. His writing too would mature and change in subtle
and sometimes dramatic ways.
If ever a line of Merton's writing captured the appeal of his spirituality, it would be
a sentence in his "Introduction" to the anthology, A Thomas Merton Reader:
"Those who continue to struggle are at peace."(5)
The genius and enduring attraction of Thomas Merton's dynamic faith radiate from that
paradoxical conviction. Merton's readers found a spiritual writer who was neither reticent
about his own experience of the multiple layers of personal struggle, nor superficial in
sharing the arduous task of integrating his life around the transcendent mystery of the
Christ and salvation. Perhaps it is his honest and, at times, perplexing struggle that
brings him closer to us.
*
Early in The Seven Storey Mountain Merton writes metaphorically about the
common experience of his circle of Columbia University graduate students in the late
1930s, the years immediately preceding America's entry into World War II:
In those days one of the things we had most in common, although perhaps we did not talk
about it so much, was the abyss that walked around in front of our feet everywhere we
went. . . I had my imaginary abyss, which broadened immeasurably and became ten
times dizzier when I had a hangover.(6)
There is an archetypal quality in this metaphor of chaos. Echoes of the opening of
Genesis reverberated in his primal fear: ". . . . [T]he earth was a
formless wasteland and darkness covered the abyss. . ." For over two
decades Thomas Merton the spiritual writer succeeded in coaxing readers to cultivate the
interior life as a bridge to traverse this abyss. Augustine's recognition that "God
is more intimate to me than I am to myself" finds a contemporary analogue in this
Cistercian monk's reminder: The most significant voyage of discovery is "to cross the
abyss that separates us from ourselves."(7)
One posthumously published "book" chronicles Merton's continuous effort to
articulate and understand his experience as a contemplative. Whether he speaks of the
illusions that seduce us, or the disguises and masks we wear, or the temptation to live as
a superficial false self, Merton always counterpoints the obstacles of our ego with the
possibility of experiencing our "true self": "[W]hen a person appears to
know his own name, it is still no guarantee that he is aware of the name as representing a
real person. On the contrary, it may be the name of a fictitious character occupied in
very active self-impersonation in the world of business, of politics, of scholarship or of
religion."(8)
In 1967, the year before his accidental electrocution in Thailand, Merton ventured
something unprecedented. In an interview with Thomas McDonnell, he offered a uniquely
candid retrospective on his own work. When asked about beginning with The Seven Storey
Mountain, he conceded that it was a fair way to initiate the interview but suggested
that they move on immediately because his autobiography had been too "black and
white." Merton explained: "I was dealing in a crude theology that I had learned
as a novice: a clean-cut division between the natural and supernatural, God and the world,
sacred and secular, with boundary lines that were supposed to be quite evident."(9) He confessed that the world was not as simple as
it had once appeared in The Seven Storey Mountain.
Whenever Thomas Merton narrated and reflected on the turmoil and failures of his own
ordinary, everyday experience (albeit in the habitat of the monastery), he had few peers
in naming the same abyss that threatened to swallow the generations of post-World
War II America. The depth of his desire for the God more intimate to us than we are
to ourselves awakened his Catholic (and other ecumenically adventurous) readers who were
stranded on the shoals of the pre-Vatican II devotional literature and caught in the
inertia of lethargic liturgy. Flannery O'Connor, a contemporary of Merton whom he lionized
as a modern-day Sophocles,(10) described this
epoch and the predicament: "The American [Catholics] seem just to be producing
pamphlets for the back of the Church (to be avoided at all costs) and installing heating
systems."(11)
Readers still discover in Merton more than a vicarious experience of stereotypical
holiness. His struggles against illusion and self-impersonation -- symbolized by the abyss
-- are a paradigm for their own modern struggles. It is not unfair to say that Thomas
Merton's achievement was made possible by the spiritual vacuum in America following World
War II. Sin, tragedy, and terror had confronted the world (on a scale previously
unimaginable) in the Holocaust and Hiroshima. Neo-Orthodox theologians revised the systems
of Reformation Christian thought with new existential formulations in order to reclaim a
foothold. In American Catholic circles, Thomas Merton the "convert"-monk blazed
a new trail. He had immersed himself in the roots of the tradition of St. Bernard of
Clairvaux, in patristic literature, and in the biblical texts. As a result he retrieved
and popularized the monastic therapy as a way to restore what Bernard calls our "lost
likeness" to God. With his gifts as a poet and narrator he penetrated the American
illusion of peace and prosperity and continues to touch America's deeper woundedness of
spirit and psyche. As he said in concluding Part One of his autobiography: "The
wounds within me were, I suppose, enough. . . [T]he very anguish and
helplessness of my position was something to which I rapidly succumbed. And it was my
defeat that was to be the occasion of my rescue."(12)
In retrospect it becomes easier to track the restlessness that cautiously peeked from
behind the pages of his early books. It initially played out in his first published
journal, The Sign of Jonas,(13) where he
quarreled with himself about the compatibility of monastic life and a writer's work. But
there was more than met the eye in the metaphor of Jonah, the reluctant prophet who came
to discover (and to proclaim) the unimaginable and universal mercy of God. It was because
America imagined itself Christian that Merton discovered how he, like Jonah, had an
obligation to help others in his adopted homeland experience this same mercy, and not to
exclude anyone.(14)
The orbit of Merton's restlessness proved to be ever wider. In 1958 he began a
correspondence with Boris Pasternak that unwittingly placed the Russian writer in some
political jeopardy. He initiated correspondence with the Polish literary critic and poet
Czeslaw Milosz early in 1960 and with the Zen scholar and master Daisetz Suzuki in 1959.
His reading returned to imaginative literature, to the fiction and poetry of his
university studies and his abandoned doctoral dissertation on Gerard Manley Hopkins. A
novice at Gethsemani in the late 1950s, Ernesto Cardenal, became his conduit to the works
of a new generation of Latin American and South American literary artists. Merton read --
literally immersed himself in -- the fiction of Albert Camus, William Faulkner, Flannery
O'Connor, James Baldwin, Walker Percy, and others. He introduced his novices to the poetry
of Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, William Blake, John Milton,
Edwin Muir, and Shakespeare. At one point he concluded that the literary artists were
especially gifted to awaken us to the spiritual threat of our being satisfied with a
makeshift identity. He credits them as being most aware of the spiritual crisis, but adds
that they are ironically "for that very reason the closest to despair."(15) His sensitivity to the existential predicament
echoed the metaphor of the "abyss that walked around in front of our feet everywhere
we went."
Merton recognized this quandary because his own life continually flirted with despair.
His journals regularly voiced desperation as an element of his temperament; in the wake of
such outbursts, he invariably reminded himself of the grace to be found in the equilibrium
and roots of his monastic identity, especially in his vocation to be a hermit. When his
readers came upon his definition of this great sin in New Seeds of Contemplation,
they found themselves holding a mirror to their own distorted and grotesque visage.
"Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love," he emphasized. "Despair is
the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the
absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God and
thereby acknowledge that [God] is above us."(16)
At this juncture another dialogue partner came in contact with the restless Merton and
encouraged him in the struggle with the status quo of the Catholic Church. Abraham Joshua
Heschel and Merton first exchanged letters in late 1960. Already in Merton's first letter
(December 17, 1960), we find a keen solidarity in confronting the illusions that
menace religion: "There are many voices heard today asserting one should 'have
religion' or 'believe,' but all they mean is that one should associate himself, 'sign up'
with some religious group. Stand up and be counted. As if religion were somehow primarily
a matter of gregariousness. Alas, we have too much gregarious stress of the wrong
kind. . . The gregariousness even of some believers is a huddling together
against God rather than adoration of His true transcendent holiness."(17)
The contemplative monk could not follow the fraudulent path of gregariousness.
Heschel's mention of his forthcoming book on the prophets reminded Merton that he had
recently taught the Book of Amos to his novices. In a 1963 letter Merton also noted how
the prophets revealed "the challenging questions"; although during Advent Isaiah
was being read daily, the divine promises "which are so infinitely
serious,. . . . are so lightly taken."(18) Heschel's definition of prophecy provides a hermeneutic for their
friendship, and also, I suggest, for understanding the crux of Merton's appeal to his
readers. This Jew descended from Hasidic roots described prophecy as "an exegesis of
existence from a divine perspective." He insisted on a subtle corrective congenial to
Merton: prophecy was "an understanding of an understanding rather than an
understanding of knowledge."(19)
When Heschel visited with Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani on July 13, 1964,
their conversation went on until late in the night, described by Merton as "an
amazing and fruitful evening."(20) One can
only conjecture about the content of their conversation. A subsequent letter from Merton
to Cardinal Bea (and copied to Heschel) about the Second Vatican Council's discussions and
draft statement on the church's relationship to the Jews hints that they spent
considerable time lamenting the reactionary Catholic resistance, but cultivating a more
constructive grounds for their own relationship. A passage from Heschel's volume, Israel:
An Echo of Eternity, perhaps best connects their contemplative kinship:
"Well-adjusted people think that faith is an answer to all human problems. In truth,
however, faith is a challenge to all human persons. To have faith is to be in labor."(21)
In an uncanny way, Merton's "Introduction" to selections from his journals in
the early 1960s, entitled Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, had insisted that
"a man is better known by his questions than by his answers. To make known one's
question is to come out in the open oneself."(22)
Faith and dialogue for Merton meant more a sharing of questions and the honest exploration
of our human situation than delivering answers. This interrogative voice was more
important to him than what he called "the ready-made, wholesale answers" offered
by the seemingly most progressive voices.(23)
Thus Merton's voice was in perfect harmony with Heschel's insistence that faith was not an
easy answer but a challenge to narrow-mindedness.
Merton's alert response to Catholic-Jewish dialogue has been eclipsed by commentators
who find more exotic his study and conversation with Buddhism, and to a lesser degree,
with Islam and Hinduism. He phrased this theological initiative carefully in his
November 4, 1964, journals: "I am more and more convinced that Romans 9-11 (the
chapters on the election of Israel) are the key to everything today. This is the point
where we have to look, and press and search and listen to the word."(24) This struggle with his identity rooted in Judaism and his restless
seeking for a reconciliation between the traditions has proved to be an enduring paradigm.
His interrogative voice also explains why Merton's forte was the essay. His books came
into being as collections of loosely arranged essays and not as systematic or sustained
studies of a topic. The very genre of the essay lent itself to Merton's restlessness. At
the risk of oversimplifying, I would venture to say that one pair of essays is emblematic
of Merton's appeal. "The Unbelief of Believers" and "Apologies to an
Unbeliever," from his 1968 collection Faith and Violence, offer an ironic
and compelling rereading of our era. There he alertly pointed out how we no longer faced
the seductions of nineteenth-century atheism but today were tempted by a secular
indifference to God's presence. In retrospect, one reads Merton's diagnosis in parallel
with the cautions raised by a generation of American theologians who warned that the
belief in success, prosperity, individualism, the Puritan ethic, nationalism, and blind
capitalism was nothing more than "civil religion." The abyss still threatened to
swallow us, and the hermit-monk reached out from where he had found a foothold. Through
these twin essays Merton joined Martin Marty in respecting those who courageously resisted
and struggled with their loneliness, dread, and risk.(25)
"Apologies to an Unbeliever" gauges Merton's ability to reach out from the
center of his Catholic tradition and engage in dialogue with other restless Catholics,
Christians, and people of other faiths or no formal faith. He had begun to use the term
"post-Christian" to characterize our world. (It could be enlarged to read
"post-religious" in his later writings.) So he admitted that the title of this
essay was intended to "scandalize" some Christians. He confessed embarrassment
for the inadequate, impertinent falsifications of religion that had been inflicted upon
people. He was grateful that the conscientious ones had refused its arrogance. There is a
not a patronizing syllable in this Merton essay. He even corrected the label
"unbeliever" and suggests that "non-believer" would be a more honest
and accurate description of contemporaries who neither accepted nor rejected religious
belief. He recognized their frailty and perplexity and distanced himself from what he
called a kind of "religious vaudeville" that trivialized religion. He embraced
Karl Rahner's diaspora model for the survival of Christianity in a secular,
non-believing world.
Merton's Catholic optimism chose to identify the contemplative potential in the
non-believers: "One must first be able to listen to the inscrutable ground of his own
being, and who am I to say that your reservations about religious commitment do not
protect, in you, this kind of listening."(26)
What recommends this essay is the nature of the dialogue it represents, its
"compassionate respect" for the restlessness of those who share a "common
predicament," echoing Heschel's reminder: "To have faith is to be in
labor." Merton put it in lyric prose-poetry:
My own peculiar task in my Church and in my world has been that of the solitary
explorer who. . . . is bound to search the existential depths of faith in
its silences, its ambiguities, and in the certainties which lie deeper than the bottom of
anxiety. In these depths there are no easy answers, no pat solutions to anything. It is a
kind of submarine life in which faith sometimes mysteriously takes on the aspect of doubt
when, in fact, one has to doubt and reject conventional and superstitious surrogates that
have taken the place of faith. On this level, the divisions between Believer and
Unbeliever cease to be so crystal clear. It is not that some are all right and others are
all wrong: all are bound to seek in honest perplexity. Everybody is an Unbeliever more or
less! Only when this fact is fully experienced, accepted, and lived with, does one become
fit to hear the simple message of the Gospel -- or of any other religious teaching.(27)
The metaphor of the abyss reappeared when Merton pointed to the weakness of our
Christian language. With a contemplative's eye he saw how easily faith could be separated
from the rest of life; he complained that "the job of bridging this abyss has been
left to ethics" -- with unsatisfactory results when our morality remains negatively
stated and superficial.(28) For that very reason,
Merton's recovery of the Christian contemplative grounds for a religious ethic attracted
perhaps his largest readership during the middle and late 1960s. When he addressed racism
in America through his penetrating essay entitled "Letters to a White Liberal,"
he reminded readers how self-righteous political stances could mask the false self we
refused to acknowledge. Merton insisted that the liberation of blacks in the United States
-- economically, socially, and politically -- offered a kairos moment for both
the oppressors and the oppressed.(29) In the same
vein, his prolific writings on war and peacemaking(30)
galvanized a generation of selective conscientious objectors and political activists who
opposed America's invasion of Southeast Asia. He shared their impatience with a moral
system that had abdicated responsibility for renewing the Christian tradition vis-a-vis
the destructive capability of modern warfare. From the hermitage his contemplative voice
refused to become an accomplice: "Because we live in a womb of collective illusion,
our freedom remains abortive. Our capacities for joy, peace, and truth are never
liberated. They can never be used. We are prisoners of a process. . . . and
real deceptions ending in futility."(31)
When Merton reached beyond the roots of his own Christian tradition, his overtures to
those outside the Judaeo-Christian culture again offered a new paradigm for dialogue. The
conversation within religious pluralism, half of which he described as a listening
process, deserved a contemplative grounding as its initiative. When he wrote to his Muslim
friend Abdul Aziz, a Sufi Master, he again appealed to the existential threat of the abyss
and their mutual rejection of all that it symbolized:
[God] alone is Real, and we have our reality only as a gift from Him at every moment.
And at every moment it is our joy to be realized by Him over an abyss of nothingness: but
the world has turned to the abyss and away from Him Who Is. That is why we live in
dreadful times, and we must be brothers in prayer and worship no matter what may be the
doctrinal differences that separate our minds.(32)
In the final analysis it is Merton's ability to help his Christian readers bridge the
abyss between their Christian faith life and the rest of their life that characterizes his
remarkable appeal even thirty years after his death. He insisted that the problem did not
lie so much with the Bible or our theology as it did within ourselves. He advised us not
to discard all the symbols of biblical revelation or the traditional terminology of our
faith "in order to substitute them for a pseudo-scientific jargon that would be valid
at best for the next ten years." Perhaps this also explains why Merton's shelf-life
will extend into the third millennium. "What is required of Christians," he
reminded, "is that they develop a completely modern and contemporary consciousness in
which their experience as [persons] in our century is integrated with their experience as
children of God redeemed by Christ."(33)
Thomas Merton brought his rootedness in the Catholic contemplative tradition to bear
upon his own restlessness and that of generations of American readers. His unfailing
ability to point to the nature of the real struggle captured their imagination: "What
can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us
from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of
discovery. . ."(34) In one of his
posthumously published essays entitled "The Identity Crisis," Merton returned to
this metaphor, reminding us that our identity is more than having a name or a face.
"Identity in this deep sense is something that one must create for [oneself] by
choices that are significant and that require courageous commitment in the face of anguish
and risk," he reassured. For that reason he never shied away from the importance of
having a belief one stands by, a certain definite way of responding to life, and loving
God and neighbor.(35) From his own rooted yet
restless story, Thomas Merton still encourages readers to discover their own freedom and
intimacy with God.
GEORGE A. KILCOURSE, JR., is Professor of Theology at Bellarmine College, Louisville,
and author of Ace of Freedoms: Thomas Merton's Christ (University of Notre Dame
Press).
Notes
1. [Back to text] Robert Lowell, "The
Verses of Thomas Merton," Commonweal ): 240.
2. [Back to text] "Is the World a
Problem?" Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master, ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham
(New York: Paulist, .
3. [Back to text]Conjectures of a
Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 156-57.
4. [Back to text] "Day of a
Stranger," Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master, 215.
5. [Back to text] "First and Last
Thoughts," A Thomas Merton Reader, ed. Thomas P. McDonnell (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1974), 18.
6. [Back to text]The Seven Storey
Mountain (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1948), 181.
7. [Back to text]The Wisdom of the
Desert (New York, New Directions).
8. [Back to text] "The Inner
Experience," Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master, 295-96. Because Merton's will
prohibited the publication of this text as a book, it was first published in serial form
in Cistercian Studies 18 and 19, nos. 1-4.
9. [Back to text] Thomas P.
McDonnell, "An Interview with Thomas Merton," Motive ): 32-41.
10. [Back to text] "Flannery
O'Connor: A Prose Elegy," Raids on the Unspeakable (New York: New
Directions, 1965), 42.
11. [Back to text] Flannery O'Connor, Collected
Works (New York: Library of America, 1988), 1038. This excerpt is from a letter to
Cecil Dawkins, July 16, 1957.
13. [Back to text] New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Company, 1953.
14. [Back to text] See my Ace of
Freedoms: Thomas Merton's Christ ((Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
1993), 114, where I quote from Merton's working notebooks for 1965 his reaction to reading
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics. He admits to cultivating his own pessimism "in
the name of 'spirituality' " but admits the need "to come to terms completely
with the world in which I live and of which I am a part, because this is the world
redeemed by Christ -- even the world of Auschwitz. . ."
15. [Back to text] "Symbolism:
Communication or Communion?" Love and Living (New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1979), 79.
16. [Back to text]New Seeds of
Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961), 180.
17. [Back to text]The Hidden Ground
of Love (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985), 430-31.
18. [Back to text] Ibid., 431. The
letter is dated January 26, 1963.
19. [Back to text] Abraham Joshua
Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), xviii.
29. [Back to text] See my "Merton's
'Letter to a White Liberal' Revisited," in Your Heart Is My Hermitage, ed.
Danny Sullivan and Iam Thompson (London: The Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and
Ireland, 1996), 155-63.
30. [Back to text] Thomas Merton, Passion
for Peace, ed. William H. Shannon (New York: Crossroad, 1995).
31. [Back to text] "Rain and the
Rhinoceros," Raids on the Unspeakable, 66.
32. [Back to text]The Hidden Ground
of Love, 49. The letter is dated May 13, 1961.
35. [Back to text]Contemplation in
a World of Action (New York: Doubleday, 1973), 78.
Does the Papacy Have a Future?
by Jean François Nothomb
Gary MacEoin's book (The Papacy and the People of God, New York: Orbis, 1998,
$12.95 [paper]) is a major resource for anyone thinking seriously about the possibilities
of the papacy in the next millennium. Before discussing the book, however, I want to
stress the importance of John Paul II's encyclical Ut Unum Sint
(May 25, 1995). In the present climate of relations between the Christian churches,
it is difficult to emphasize adequately the pope's courage in daring for the first time to
place in doubt the dogma of 1870, "not its substance, but in its application"
(no. 95). In no. 96 he appeals to the church leaders of our separated brothers
to aid him in this delicate task, an appeal which in general was very favorably received.
Can John Paul II doubt that, in offering this encyclical, he has begun a process
whose result he cannot foresee with certitude? The Papacy and the People of God
may help us anticipate its consequences.
The book contains eleven essays by informed observers from several continents. Three
deserve special attention because their subject matter goes beyond purely ecclesiastical
themes: Joan Chittister's "Women in the Church," Pablo Richard's "The South
Will Judge the North: The Church Between Globalization and Inculturation," and
Francis X. Murphy's "Jubilee 2000 and the Quality of Life."
Chittister states an elementary truth: "The scientific revolution, once the very
bastion of the male control of nature, has in our lifetime put the lie to male
autonomy. . . ., to the notion that the world was made for disposal of
man. . . Males were made in the image of God. Women made in the image of man.
Women were 'natural' by virtue of a physiology designed for birthing rather than
thinking" (6, 7). As a commentary, let me cite Maria Teresa Porcile Santiso, a
young Uruguayan liberation theologian, who points out that
society will be fully human only when the two fundamental "modalities" of
being human, male and female, contribute their specific qualities. Today, as for
centuries, we are acting out a caricature of God's creation by tacitly accepting that
"man" means "male." That is why it is indispensable. It is equally
necessary for men to discover their own profound identity, which is still unknown to them
because during all these centuries of patriarchal culture they have believed that
"human" meant accepting the masculine as norm. The challenge of such a change
poses itself in terms of creativity and creation; its protagonists are man and woman,
united and distinct, in complete participation and otherness. (La mujer, espacio de
salvación [Montevideo, Ediciones Trilce), 144)
For the Church there is much research to be done in this domain. The moving meditation
of John Paul II, Mulierem Dignitatis, marked a point of no return. With the
exception of paragraph 27, where, in the name of the Christ-Church (man-woman)
symbolism, it categorically rejects the possibility of priesthood for women, this letter
makes a clean sweep of all the ready-made cliches which Roman Catholic and Orthodox
hierarchs have been repeating for generations and proves that the evolution of the role of
women in modern public life has brought about changes in the church's mentality.
As Joan Chittister puts it: "The next papacy will be required to demonstrate a
clear appearance of the equality of women or the credibility of the church in a world
awakening to equality will be severely, if not mortally, compromised. . . Women
must be included in that same theological debate with that same sincerity or the work of
the church is only half finished" (10, 11). "We need a Pentecost papacy in the
next millennium," she concludes, "that can hear the many voices of women -- each
speaking in her own tongue -- and understand them" (14).
I found Pablo Richard's essay (131-143) especially moving because it reminded me of
what I had learned during the eight years I spent with my yecuanas and yonomamis friends
in Venezuela. Citing John Paul II's 1984 homily at Namao, Canada -- "In the
light of the words of Christ, this poor South will judge the opulent North" -- he
presents the paradigmatic colonial scorn and disdain of whites for the "savage":
Man, Adult, Human, Soul, Reason (Spaniards) over Woman, Child, Animal, Body, Appetite
(indigenous people). Why, for example, was Bartolomé de Las Casas not canonized by John
Paul II in 1992, as many Latin American bishops had requested? Las Casas, after all,
was the father of liberation theology and an advocate for human rights. Richard states
emphatically: "The church has to choose between inculturation and globalization. The
church is universal and catholic if it chooses inculturation. The universality of the
church can only be established in defense of the life, spirit, and culture of the peoples
who are oppressed and excluded by Western globalization. . . Globalization is
ecclesial, Eurocentric, patriarchal, authoritarian and hostile to the body" (134). He
echoes many of Chittister's themes: "The intellectual training, the obligatory
celibacy, and the exclusion of women all follow the same logic, which is also the logic
that excludes the indigenous, people of African descent, and the poor in general. The
Third World church, which opts not for power but for the poor, enjoys, in this world, an
overwhelming power that is specific to it: the power of the Spirit, of the Word, and of
Theology" (138).
It is from this vision of a church that shares the lot of the despised of our world --
especially those of Asia and the South -- that the sufferings of the poor, united to those
of Jesus on the cross, became a forceful dynamic for change. These churches of the Third
World will be the cornerstone of a new way of living Christianity "in which the
participation of all women and men -- especially the outcasts of society -- is possible
and basic" (135).
The paper by Francis X. Murphy, C.S.S.R., "Jubilee 2000 and the Quality of
Life" (90-101), touches on the cultural problem the churches -- and all of us -- have
to confront. "New values had begun to emerge, such as the supremacy of human reason
and the sacredness of human freedom. Amid the fierce political tensions of the age, people
were beginning to suspect that God was yielding his place to man as the center of gravity.
Instinctively, the church began to feel that the long-overlooked laity were the key to the
situation. . . ." (95). Murphy emphasizes the influence of The
Divine Milieu of Teilhard de Chardin and its importance for the council of
John XXIII.
Like Chittister and Richard, he makes clear that the church has to rediscover the
language of ordinary people, in order to understand them, and in order to be understood
when she speaks.
All the authors who collaborated in The Papacy and the People of God echo, in
one way or another, the criticisms Archbishop John R. Quinn put forth in his
well-known conference at Oxford in 1996. The late Bernard Häring, for example, speaks of
the letdown after the hopes aroused by the election of John Paul II in 1978:
"The past two decades. . . . have disillusioned me" (16). John
Wilkins shows that there cannot be a true reform of the church without a reform of the
papacy. Such a reform has not occurred. After the parenthesis of Vatican II, the
absolute monarchy already in place before the council of Trent restored world Catholicism,
at least in governance, to a monolithic bloc more solid than in the time of Pius XII.
Paul Collins remarks that "John Paul II has achieved a centralization of papal
power unmatched in history" (22). Wilkins observes that "John Paul II
towers over the church" (123).
What a contradiction there is between the open-minded perspectives toward those outside
the church expressed in Ut Unum Sint and the tightening of discipline within the
church! The episcopal collegiality rediscovered by Vatican II has remained
ineffective. The pope is, indeed, a man apart. The personality cult which surrounds the
sovereign Pontiff, not just in Rome but in the whole Catholic world, is expressed in the
second great prayer of Good Friday which is for the pope alone. There is no way
to convince the ordinary Catholic faithful and the other Christian confessions that the
church is above all the people of God, as Vatican II defined it. This
solitude of the pope even appears in Ut Unum Sint (n. 95): "I am convinced
that I have a special responsibility in this regard, above all when I hear the request
which is addressed to me.. . . ." A pope convinced of the
necessity of episcopal collegiality would never speak like that. Giancarlo Zizola calls
attention to this "inhumane" solitude: "It is necessary to reduce the
physical and psychic overload to which the pope is subjected. . . . so as
not to exceed the limits of fatigue a human being can tolerate" (53, citing Cardinal
Koenig of Vienna). If we rightly admire the ecumenical openness of the pope, we also have
the right to ask why this openness does not extend first of all to the episcopal college
and to those of the Catholic laity who have affirmed that "we are the church"
and have expressed themselves on a national level in "appeals of the people of
God." The adult laity should have their word to say in questions which are of vital
interest to them.
The fact remains that John Paul II is the author of Ut Unum Sint, a
remarkable document which seems to me to be the culmination of the work of the World
Council of Churches which has been spearheading the search for Christian unity for the
last half-century. What I have never understood is why the Catholic Church is still not a
full member of the World Council, especially after the recent "Copernican
revolution" in ecumenism. We have gone from a "catholicocentric"
perspective to a "christocentic" perspective; today each of the Christian
confessions gives to the others all that is positive in its special charisma, as suggested
in 1 Cor. 12:1-30. As John Paul II said, "The gifts of each should develop
for the unity and advantage of all" (Beyond the Threshold of Hope,
c. 23). Christian unity should be rebuilt, starting from the mutual schism
of 1054 and the sixteenth-century rupture of Latin Christianity. Let's finish once and for
all with this idea of a "return" to the one true church which possesses
the truth!
Essential to this search for unity is the role of the petrine ministry of communion and
service, which includes infallibility and circumscribes the different primacies. The dogma
of infallibility, as it was defined by Vatican I, is the stumbling block between the
Catholic Church and the other Christian churches and should have been treated more
extensively in The Papacy and the People of God. Had the Eastern churches
participated in the councils that we Latins qualify as "ecumenical," and which
took place after the rupture of the undivided church, the definition of infallibility
would obviously have been quite different. For non-Catholic Christians these
"ecumenical" councils are only local councils -- important, to be sure, but
"western" and not binding as far as they are concerned. On this point I think it
is significant that Paul VI, on the occasion of the seventh centennial of the council
of Lyon, very deliberately referred to it as the "second general council of
Lyon" and then, more explicitly still, as the "sixth of the general synods
held in the West" (letter addressed to Cardinal Willebrands in 1974 and read
publicly in the cathedral of Lyon that year). Paul VI opened up a road which should
be followed. As Msgr. Elias Zoghby, retired bishop of Baalbeck, Lebanon has said:
"Infallibility depends on ecumenicity" (Il Regno-Attualità, 14/96,
col. 422).
MacEoin and his collaborators should have treated the Great Schism of 1054 with the
same attention it gave to the councils which were held after the rupture. Did Rome or
Constantinople have the authority to declare the other party schismatic? It seems evident
that neither party had such authority, nor did either party have authority to convoke an
ecumenical council and thus "define a truth of the faith," as did
Vatican I. While the East accepted this situation, the West did not; witness the
three "dogmas" of 1854, 1870, and 1950.
It is thus necessary that the Catholic Church muster the courage to review a so-called
"dogmatic," irrevocable decision defined "ex cathedra" by only one
of the parties concerned. Olivier Clement, the French Orthodox theologian, is optimistic:
"At the horizon of the year 2000 -- or a bit later -- there will be a truly
ecumenical council (where the Protestants will also be present, since Rome and its Reform
cannot be separated) which will be able to examine, in the light of Apostolic Tradition
and the Communion of the Saints, what each has defined separately. We shall then
understand that the aged bishop of Rome desirous, in his very weakness, to bring his
pontificate to a fulfillment in a different manner has, by his appeal to unity,
truly become servus servitorum Dei" (Contacts, no. 170,
p. 158).
At this point it may be asked whether the Western church is not caught in a vicious
circle by defining the dogma of infallibility in such a way that the Latin church alone
justifies it. By qualifying realities which are not explicitly revealed as
"irreformable," it closes the door to any type of evolution, whether historical
or cultural. We have already had, in 1896, the case of Anglican orders judged invalid by
the Bull Apostolicae Curae, of Leo XIII; numerous Catholic theologians have
requested that the subject be reconsidered, but they have been impeded from proceeding
further by this "forever" attached to a question which is not part of revealed
doctrine.
The 1994 Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, on the ordination of women,
declared that this teaching belonged to the deposit of faith but was not a dogmatic
definition. Archbishop Weakland commented: "The church has two options: a first is to
slam the door on all discussion about the ordination of women and accept the consequences
which ensue. The other is to leave the door open to discussion and to continue a very
important dialogue, painful as it might be, between the tradition of the church and the
currents of modern society." Olivier Clement, for his part, wrote: "I doubt that
this letter, pathetic in its desire to impose a definitive position, will interrupt the
reflection under way within the Christian world, the Catholic Church included. The risk
for the Catholic Church, perhaps, will be to divide itself into a militant minority which
will consider every declaration of the pope as quasi-infallible and a rather uncertain
majority which will envisage its adhesion to the church in a different manner -- or no
longer envisage it at all. It seems to me that neither of these attitudes corresponds to
the authentic Tradition, which is life in the spirit in the Body of Christ and always
marked by the search for communion" (La Croix, Paris, 6/1/94).
This decision is an example of the harshness of the Apostolic See -- actually, of the
Roman Curia -- negating the breakthrough of John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint.
Unfortunately, we need to point out three other cases where there is the same negation of
views proposed in that document. First, there is the recent Instruction on the Role of
the Laity in the Pastoral Mission (Aug. 15, 1997), which caused a genuine
stupefaction and led to protests by many bishops whose dioceses are acutely in need of
priests. Cardinal Koenig is quoted as stating: "The bureaucratic apparatus of the
Vatican has developed its own life to such a level as to take on (de facto, not de
jure) functions which are proper to collegiality" (53). It is no surprise that
the tone of this Curia document is extremely juridical; the closer John Paul's pontificate
comes to its conclusion, the bolder it becomes. When John Paul II is away from Rome,
he is relaxed and content -- for example, during his recent visit to Cuba, where the
freshness of his message astonished everyone. At Rome, however, he returns to the control
of the ultra-conservative Curia. Fr. Bernard Sesboue, S.J., points out the paradox of
a pontificate inspired, from its very first day, by the leitmotif, "be not
afraid," generating a document like this in which fear is the dominating theme: fear
that there be confusion between the priesthood of the faithful and the
ministerial priesthood, for example. "Eight Roman congregations cooperated in
producing this text, which is a slap at episcopal collegiality in so far as it is
addressed to the bishops as though they were under suspicion of not carrying out their
episcopal obligations" (Il Regno-Attualità, 2/98, col. 13).
This intolerable situation cannot continue, and it is the pope -- or a council
-- that should put an end to it. As things stand, the 4,600 functionaries of the Roman
Curia (cf. Zizola, 52) form a totally masculine power, without any other
preoccupations or responsibilities, so that they can devote themselves full time to
playing a quasi-papal role! People of God makes this point. As Paul Collins
writes: "There is a sense in which the papacy of John Paul II is the natural
result of all that was decided in 1870"; it is what Alain Woodrow calls creeping
infallibility (78).
The excommunication -- and its revocation a year later -- of the Sri Lankan theologian,
Fr. Tissa Balasuriya, is another example of this tendency. How could Rome, which is
always calling for the inculturation of the church's theology and liturgy, cut the feet
out from under the research undertaken by one of its most courageous theologians?
Nevertheless, the revocation of the sentence is a positive sign which proves that the
vehement protests of bishops and other personalities can finally have some
impact. The church in Asia, in Africa -- even in Latin America -- is far from being in
communion with the deep-rooted local cultures of these continents. As an example of this I
recommend the last novel of the Japanese author Shusaku Endo, Deep River.
A text prepared by the Japanese bishops before the Asian synod illustrates this
problem: "In order to give a new visage to the relations between the Holy See and the
churches which are in Asia, it is necessary to consider a new system of relations no
longer based on 'centralization' but on 'collegiality.' We ask that Rome recognize a just
autonomy for the local churches. It is strange, for example, that the Holy See has to
approve a Japanese translation of liturgical and catechetical texts which the bishops'
conference has already approved. For the evangelization of our peoples, for the
encouragement of inculturation, for the construction of an authentic collegiality among
the churches of Asia, there must be confidence in the local churches and their
independence must be respected in everything which concerns administration and all other
matters" (Adista, 20/98, 5).
The removal of Jacques Gaillot from his episcopal see of Evreux (France) in 1995 was
another instance of this indifference to collegiality. The French Episcopal Conference
could and should have resisted the pressures of the Roman Curia. Earlier (1983), the
Vatican had forced the resignation of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo of Luanda (Zambia),
because he had acquired too much influence through his exorcisms (cf. Matt. 10:1 and 10:8)
and was threatening the authority of the President of the Republic, M. Kaunda. More
recently, the Vatican wanted to force the retirement of Dom Samuel Ruiz, the bishop of San
Cristobal de Las Casas, in Mexico -- the responsibility of the nuncio in this case is
enormous. He was "saved" because he was the only mediator acceptable to the
Zapatist Front of National Liberation. The Holy See, however, named a coadjutor bishop with
full powers alongside Bishop Ruiz. This backfired, however, when the coadjutor
quickly became "converted" to the struggle of the poor peasants of Chiapas --
something like what happened to Archbishop Romero.
Episcopal collegiality is a wonderful ideal, but what is it in reality? "Above
all, the popes (Paul VI and John Paul II) finally refused to give the synod of
bishops any real decisional power, such as, for example, the election of the
pope, preferring what they called "affective" collegiality to an authentic
episcopal force that might threaten papal prerogatives. . ." (Alain
Woodrow, 82).
Reflection on The Papacy and the People of God only supports the statement of
Paolo Ricca, pastor of the Vaudian church in Italy: "John Paul II should be
aware that the papacy, such as it is understood now, has no realistic chance. If it is to
have a chance it must change. But only a pope can change the papacy. By writing Ut
Unum Sint John Paul II has begun the process. . ." (Irenikon,
97/1, 31).
JEAN FRANÇOIS NOTHOMB, who worked for many years with the Indians in the Amazon as a
member of the Little Brothers of Jesus, lives in Rome, where he is an editor for the
International Maritain Institute.
Converting to Religion after Its Demise:
Thoughts on Marcel Gauchet and His American Reception
by Steven Englund
A superb English translation of (most of) Marcel Gauchet's thirteen-year-old classic of
political and social thought that rocked France, The Disenchantment of the World: A
Political History of Religion, has recently appeared in Princeton University Press's
praiseworthy "New French Thought" series.(1)
It is introduced with a fine essay by Charles Taylor. This is a brilliant -- original and
piercing -- book that deserves far more attention, and certainly more understanding, than
it has gotten. For this lack of attention, Gauchet has partly himself to blame. His
abstruse style is, for whole stretches, virtually impenetrable to mortal readers. It need
not be. What the French philosopher has to say is both important and understandable.
Gauchet is, in some ways, a cordial and appreciative analyst of Christianity. His book
makes religion into something like the historical fons et origo of human society.
Religion -- in our case, Christianity -- has long since succeeded in totally suffusing our
social language, values, and institutions. This thesis, a welcome relief from studies that
have ignored religion's importance in building society, has endeared Gauchet to some,
leading them overlook in him the percipient and remorseless atheist whose view of religion
is that of the Enlightenment and of Feuerbach. Religion is "the embodiment of social
man's negative relation to himself into social forms. . . [It is] a way of
institutionalizing humans against themselves. . . The central noteworthy feature
of the religious is precisely that this constitutive power of negation has been given the
task of disguising itself. . ." These ideas, and many like them in these
pages, should confront believers -- and have, in France -- with some painful observations,
analyses, and objections about religion.
Situating himself in the grand social theory tradition of Weber and Durkheim -- one
that presupposes an immense interdisciplinary learning and a taste for high generalization
rare in our time -- Gauchet argues that the world has reached the end of its long
religious day. Although religion formed and still deeply permeates modern society, society
has long since evolved beyond the gods and sacralized itself, the organic community, the
nation-state. Gauchet's most original and penetrating analysis shows how Christianity, in
particular, is "the religion of the end of religion." Christianity has done
itself out of existence. The 'problem' inscribed at the heart of the twin foundational
Christian doctrines of the infinite worth of the individual soul and the utter
transcendence of God is that they led to the undermining of the Christian belief system
itself, exposing it to dissidence and instability at the center. Christianity's radical
removal of "the Other" (God) from the world led, as day follows night, to the
decline in social human's dependence on the divine. In brief, Christianity gave rise to a
faith that gradually turned against the ideological self-subjugation that all religion
classically is. The Christian God liberated men and women from the ancient world's
omnipresent gods, but the growth in freedom led to the modern state of affairs wherein
religion as the great refusal (of freedom) has itself been refused. Expressed in Gauchet's
turgid but effective prose: "[T]he greater the gods, the freer humans are, the degree
of human obligation toward the law given to them from outside is, contrary to appearances,
inversely related to the degree of concentration of, and separate from, the
divine. . . Transcendence separates reason and faith. . . There is no
intellectual access to a God radically separated from the world, so humans are now on
their own. . ."
(Gauchet's analysis of Catholic ecclesiology and its "necessary" religious
consequences could only be called protestant. The history of the Church turns on a
"major ambiguity," he believes. On the one hand, its "prevailing language
is one of mediation. . . . between living beings and the spiritual
realm," but on the other hand, the Church's centralized institutions and articulated
dogmas signify "the opposite: the impossibility of mediation, the irreversible
fracture between the human city and the kingdom of the absolute." The result was that
the organized Church ever more insistently established itself as the idol to be rejected
-- by believers as well as nonbelievers. The Reformation simply got the jump on the rest
of modern history.)
As religion receded from co-extensiveness with society, society famously developed
secular values, institutions, rites, etc. Remorselessly, Gauchet demonstrates that any
attempt to stop or reverse "the divine's inexorable withdrawal [from society] is
futile." It is futile because it fails to grasp the logic at work both in religion
and in society. Perhaps Gauchet's most original analysis is the one for which the book is
subtitled. He offers a close historical explication of the critical role of the state in
effecting humankind's departure from religion. In this view, the state first challenged,
then replaced, religious authority, rites, and institutions. Social power did not so much
become secularized as the sacred saw itself reassigned from the clerical to the political
form -- in Gauchet's words, the "Nation came to personify immortality." All of
this is a very French experience and analysis, but it is not necessarily inapplicable to
Anglo-American history. The Durkheimian insight that society, in Gauchet's user-unfriendly
language, "realizes the collective body's internal self-congruence," stands.
Adept at historical analysis, Gauchet has a no-less sure hand for the present. In his
view, the high, arid, over-oxygenated plain onto which we moderns have debouched from our
five-thousand-year trek through "religion" is at once a painful,
disequilibrating, and exhilarating place to be. The "autonomous self" we now are
inhabits a world that is no longer "presented" but must be
"constituted." It is a world, let us be clear, that is not one whit less
post-religious for being "in continuity with religious man." Again, it is best
to give Gauchet's words, for they are far from lacking poignancy: "From now on we are
destined to live openly and in the anguish from which the gods had spared
us. . . Perhaps we will never find a true balance between self-love that wishes
to exclude all else and the desire to abolish the self, between absolute being and
being-as-nothingness. Such is the daily throbbing pain that no sacral opiate can blot out:
the merciless contradictory desire inherent in the very reality of being a subject."
More specifically, the "daily throbbing pain" ensues from humanity's
insertion in what Gauchet calls a "new structure of social time," a world which
refers for its "legitimation" to the unknowable and ever-changing future, not
the immutable, mythical past. But this plunges us moderns into a kind of headlong pitch
forward (une fuite en avant, in French) that is highly destabilizing. In
Gauchet's words, "the less possible it is for us to consider the future an object of
superstition and worship, the more apparent it becomes that the future will be other than
we imagine. The more we accept ourselves as authors of history, the only remaining enigma
is we ourselves."
Yet baffling and anxious enigmas we are. Constituting our individual identity when it
is no longer imparted to us by the social collectivity is a problematic experience.
Gauchet is curious about how we moderns tote the barge of our autonomy. We do it variously
and inconsistently, he argues. We create consuming political ideologies (fascism,
communism, etc.); we expand our taste for the aesthetic experience ("the continuation
of the sacred by other means"); and paradoxically, we choose to "bask in a
nondifferentiated residue of religion."
Here, we come to one of Marcel Gauchet's more under-appreciated but profound
observations: the characteristic social phenomena of our time that sees some people turn
to religious conversion as a response to the disequilibrating experience of freedom in a
pluralist world. This is where Gauchet's distinction between religion as personal faith
and religion as the ideological creator and designer of society stands him in brilliant
stead. The two things -- faith and religion -- are not the same, any more than are the
questions of the objective truth-value of religious myths (Gauchet thinks they have none)
and religion's social valence, its power to form and inform the collectivity. Individual
pockets of faith may indeed postdate the decline of religion as a major social player. In
Gauchet's words: "We can imagine the extreme of a society comprised entirely of
believers, yet beyond the religious."
It is a matter of choice. Some, says Gauchet, may elect generalized spirituality, some
a particular religious practice, just as they may "de-accession" it and go on to
another, or move around the "cafeteria" of one tradition. Gauchet personally
recommends Taoism or Buddhism to the reader because "these spiritualities contain no
theistic implications. . . The void or nothing they conjure up is thus better
placed than Christianity's customary theological categories to express the pure experience
of thought." That said, however, he has no problem with anyone's choices. He is not
your classic French anticlerical exponent of laïcisme. The only serious mistake
on Gauchet's telling would be to confuse this flitting among religions and spiritualities
with living in or returning to a world structured by religion. The oak, as John Noonan
puts it in his splendid new book (The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience
of Religious Freedom), cannot go back to the acorn.
*
Reactions to Gauchet among orthodox Christians have been curiously favorable. Their
gratitude to him for bringing religion front and center leads them to overlook his
announcement of its supersession. Thus, Brian Anderson, in the journal First Things
(June/July 1998), after painting a loving and useful portrait of this book's contents,
waits until his short coda to demur on the issue of religion's "truth-value."
Anderson allows as how "Christianity might be true." In the same issue, Richard
John Neuhaus signals another study of post-religious secularization, Manuel Castells' The
Rise of the Network Society, which, like Gauchet's book, descries within contemporary
society's 'religious revival' the total disenchantment of the world in its social
organization. To this, Neuhaus's thoughtful response is: "Wrong. Wrong.
Wrong. . . We are witnessing the re-enchantment of the world," he asserts,
and cites, in support, Gerard Manly Hopkins: "the world is charged with the grandeur
of God."
Now one sympathizes with these men -- including the philosopher Charles Taylor who, in
his helpful introduction to Gauchet's volume, suggests that "God" may
"really exist." Frankly, my own first reaction when I read Gauchet was to make a
similar statement. The reader will thus, I hope, see that I intend no disrespect for my
intellectual betters when I opine that this is all quite beside the point. Gauchet has
made systematic assertions for religion's retirement as a formative social force from
human history. The argument, and indeed the state of affairs, that asks to be refuted is
this: the world, for all that it may be reverential toward religion, is no longer
referential to religion in its social organization. This, not the possibility or
desirability of personal religious faith, is what Gauchet is talking about when he writes,
"Religion was initially a general shaping of humans' material, social, and mental
life. All that remains of it today are individual experiences and belief systems, while
actions affecting things, and the link between beings and the mind's organizing categories
contradict the logic of dependence that initially governed them. This constitutes our
departure from the age of religions."
No small irony resides in a state of affairs where Gauchet's points are perhaps best
driven home by a recent work of Christian apologetics. Patrick Glynn's God: The
Evidence. The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular World is a slim
volume that has received kudos from sources as diverse as Andrew Greeley and Michael
Novak, Hans Küng and Robert Bork. It opens with the story of the author's conversion to
Christianity. Glynn is a Harvard-trained philosopher who worked for the Reagan
Administration in arms control. The turning point in his conversion from intellectual
atheism was falling in love with a woman who was "a believer. . . . a
strong spiritual Christian." The book's main task is to adduce evidence for why the
"ugly" conclusion, "we are on our own," is no longer plausible, no
longer where the smart money is going.
Glynn's "evidence" comes from two realms: the scientific and the
psychological. The latter is the data accumulated about near-death experiences and the
therapeutic uses of prayer and church-going. The former is the author's rather tendentious
account of some of the latest speculations in theoretical physics -- notably "the
Anthropic Principle," a view held by a Cambridge cosmologist who argues that the
cosmos is not random in its origin, as has been thought, but contains certain
"mysterious coincidences" that may, and indeed should, be interpreted as
constituting a telos for humankind's existence. The theory, in other words, bids fare to
up-end the Copernican revolution and return homo sapiens to the center of the
natural order.
The point of Glynn's compilation of 'evidence' -- his piling Ossian onto Pella, if you
will -- is not to conclude that a person may reason his way to God (the gift of grace
remains decisive, he insists) but to shift the burden of proof back onto the shoulders of
the religious skeptics. This, Glynn believes he has done. He also goes further and makes
social-historical statements. He sees Christianity virtually everywhere. He writes,
"The reason we admire what we admire in the modern polity is precisely that the
values Jesus put forward in the New Testament are the central human
values. . ." He notes, not without ironic chuckles, that "the leading
American postmodern philosopher," Richard Rorty, readily grants that Christianity is
the source of most secular values. Glynn, in fact, cannot contain himself: "The day,
I believe, is soon coming when skepticism, unbelief, is going to be the minority position,
not just among the populace at large, but even among intellectuals."
Well, perhaps, but we should pause a moment before we usher modernity or postmodernity
(depending on your definition) out history's back door. Marcel Gauchet would not for a
second contest much of what Glynn asserts nor try to refute his "evidence,"
although he might smile at the American's breathless announcement, made in the absence of
any sociological, philosophical, or historical argumentation whatever, that
"post-modernism is post-secularism waiting to be reborn."
The point is, Gauchet's book makes allowance for a Glynn; Glynn's does not for a
Gauchet. Glynn's appeal in faith to faith illustrates Gauchet's theme that the modern
human is free to do anything he likes, including invoke "the anthropological
prop" that is religion. When Glynn recounts his conversion, he, in Gauchet's words
"testifies to [his] faithfulness to [God's] law," but he does so
"individually, from within [his] instituting freedom," and not as an individual
in response to society's formation. The confiteor of the lonely vertical pronoun
("I") merely buttresses Gauchet's case that "if we have surpassed the
religious, it has not left us, and perhaps never will, even though its historical
effectiveness is finished. . . We have gone from being within religion to being
outside it, and this to-ing and fro-ing and unstable compromise between belonging and
withdrawal, between worshiping the problematic and choosing the solution, defines our
age's specific religiosity -- and is perhaps the best way for the religious to survive in
a world without religion." Glynn lambastes those darlings of the Zeitgeist, which he
denotes as "caprice," "aesthetic obsession," "private
project," "the spirit of self-creation"; yet, what is his book but an
exercise in "self-creation," the winsome telling of the story of his own private
project, his own wrestling with the problem of his identity?
In sum, "the departure from religion," as Gauchet affirms and reaffirms, has
neither been fortuitous or coincidental, nor has it happened because "lots of
people" lost their faith; nor will it be undone because lots of people -- including
some very smart and distinguished ones -- reassert their faith or the possibility of it.
Gauchet is not being supercilious or disdainful, he is simply being methodical, when he
writes, "there are very good reasons for humans to convert to religion after its
demise." But he adds, "there are even better reasons for these conversions not
to be profound or long-lasting, since humans cannot abandon the reasons that caused them
to convert."
One has the impression that Glynn -- like Anderson, Neuhaus, and even Charles Taylor --
fails to grasp the meaning and implications of the analysis here offered. They "have
reached bedrock and their spade is turned," as the philosopher Thomas Nagel might put
it, but, I would add, they do not appear to know it. The very fact that none of these men
has attacked The Disenchantment of the World is telling and indeed poignant. The
book has not been assailed, I would propose, both because its author has not attacked
faith (that would provoke neuralgia and anxiety) and because he has stipulated to
religion's -- more especially, to Catholicism's -- claim on the beauty part in Western
history. That Gauchet has also, very politely and brilliantly, limned the end of religion
as a public force, while demonstrating how Christianity contained within itself the seeds
of its own supersession, therefore hurts little, for he shows appreciation both of a
convert's new-found faith and pride in his religious tradition.
The recent flourishing of apologists like Glynn, with their proclaimed successful
quests for certainty and (in Neuhaus's case) their deep concern for orthodoxy and papal
authority, are further signs that Gauchet's analysis is accurate. The presupposition of
their furious advocacy is precisely his point that the Church is no longer co-extensive
with society and has not been a dispositive social force for years. In a way, Glynn and
Neuhaus should be glad. If Glynn's predictions of religion's return to
cultural-intellectual hegemony were accurate, he and his cohorts would lose their
enjoyable posture of hard-pressed, misunderstood minority and would be seen to be speaking
platitudes. In a religiously formed society, they would have no clout or audience.
They need not worry.
*
Teaching a confirmation class (CCD) of select high school juniors and seniors, as I
have for a decade, has shown me in spades how alive and well is "the autonomous
self," even in a rural Wisconsin town. Catholic Waupaca is, without making a fuss
over it, decades into post-religiosity, as Gauchet understands it. A few of my kids'
grandparents have lively memories of active corporate Catholicism, but fully fifty percent
of my Wednesday-night flock does not live in families that go to Mass even once for every
change of liturgical color. You readily see the results in their children's
"Alzheimer's" approach to religious ed: after ten to twelve years of CCD, the
kids (and mine always include valedictorians and salutatorians) learn something -- a
biblical quote, a definition, a prayer, etc. -- only to forget it the next hour and learn
it again in the next year's CCD class, then forget it, and relearn it, and so on. If they
are beyond more than superficial embarrassment at this state of affairs, it is because
none of it ties in to anything they live by and with. Precisely the social-collective
aspects of religion -- e.g., the Mass -- are what they least feel the power of or can
least be got across to them.
More to Gauchet's immediate point, a CCD teacher soon realizes that even if she leads
her wards to accepting confirmation, their decisions for the sacrament are
"secularly" arrived at and framed; they are options exercised for now,
expressions of personal freedom and opinion, none of it a matter of life or death, all
quite unrooted in the rest of what is going on around them. The one tactic I have happened
upon that sparks their interest is Pascal's wager, but that is because they interpret it
as a wise choice, a good bet that speaks well for the wagerer's intelligence. The few kids
each year who exercise other options -- opting for (Protestant) sects, fashioning
individual melds of far Eastern and/or New Age spirituality, etc. -- rarely stick with
them. But then, neither do their more numerous Catholic counterparts, who, from the
outset, make no promise, individual or corporate, to join the communitas.
Nor are my kids religious in their broader moral foundations and values. Their sense of
good and bad is not, even if you push them, tied to God or Church, but to secular values
and institutions (often the faux or feckless protest values of rock and/or rap music and
lyrics). It used to be that morality was anchored in religion; now, the reverse holds
true. Our sore-pressed pastor does his homiletic best to tie in Catholicism to his flock's
pre-established (secular) ethics and morality. The world my kids join is a post-religious
society drenched in religious history and references that are little known and less cared
about. "San Francisco" is a word that raises many images for them, but none that
is remotely likely to put them in mind of the Assisi friar. The concepts that describe
their Catholicism are echt-Gauchetian: "live and let live," "private
religion," "cafeteria Catholicism," "relativism,"
"opinionism." I do not say this in anger, still less in surprise or pleasure; I
note it. It is as irreversible a fact of life up here as divorce, contraception, or the
automobile.
*
A man who understands both what Gauchet is saying and what Glynn is doing is the
sociologist, Peter Berger. In a recent article in The Christian Century, Berger
accepts the central thesis, advanced by Gauchet, about the permanent end of
co-extensiveness between society and religion. He essays a radically different case from
Glynn's, one that is modest in tone and accepting of cognitive pluralism, in substance.
Unlike Glynn, he holds that faith has little to do with scientific or, still less, with
therapeutic evidence.(2) Indeed, faith, for
Berger, is not about knowing but about believing, in the absence of proof. In the face of
the current cultural spectrum of competing and incompatible forms of meaning, Berger
advocates "epistemological modesty."(3)
Championing the principle of the ecclesia semper reformanda, he makes the most of
the present social reality of "weak churches" (weak in organization and
membership). He speaks a most helpful and, I would say, powerful, word on behalf of the
Christian strength of weakness, of the "self-emptying Jesus," of believers
"unsure of themselves, groping for a few glimpses of truth to hold onto."
On the other hand, Berger has no response to make to Gauchet's central argument about
the self-inflicted disappearance of Christianity as a formative social reality. None of
the above should imply that I think there are no replies to be made to Gauchet, perhaps
even on his own ground, but it is to say that I, for one, cannot think of any. More to the
point, I especially think no effective reply will be made by readers who ignore the
gravamen of Gauchet's analysis. The functional approach to religion may not be the last
word, but, in the Frenchman's hands, it is a profound analysis, dangerous to ignore,
misunderstand, or underrate. When Gauchet writes that "it is not the reality of [the
religion] phenomenon that is in question, but its nature and role"; we must not
permit our relief at the former part of the statement to make us forget the power of the
latter, "nature and role."
On that thought, and in closing, we might do well to ponder some big words by Henri de
Lubac, S.J., a most orthodox thinker (except when he was not). During the Second World
War, the future cardinal found time and reason to ponder an even greater atheist than
Marcel Gauchet -- indeed an "anti-theist": Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the
mid-nineteenth century socialist thinker whom Karl Marx strongly disapproved of.(4) The more business-like and academic Gauchet
displays none of Proudhon's anger and unrelenting, tormented fascination with
Christianity. Lubac was in turn fascinated by Proudhon's torment and fascination.
Lubac isolates one observation of Proudhon's: "A religion's hour has come when a
troubled conscience puts to itself the question, not whether that religion is true: doubts
about dogma are not sufficient for the down-fall of a religion; -- nor whether it needs to
be reformed: reforms in matters of faith are proof of religious vitality; -- but whether,
that religion, so long reputed to be the protector and the mainstay of morals, is equal to
its task, or what I might put in other words, whether it really has a moral code."
And Lubac writes -- not without some fear and trembling, one suspects -- "That
objection is the only one, it seems to me, which is worth anything. It is the only one
which gets to the bottom of things."
The Jesuit, I submit, 'got it,' and unless that hard lesson of Proudhon's, now
Gauchet's, is truly assimilated, then the sorts of confessions and disclaimers proffered
by a Glynn sound -- to me, anyway -- like a dead person's insisting, "well, my finger
nails are still growing." I, too, love the Hopkins line Neuhaus quoted (above), but I
would suggest that Wallace Stevens is a poet the modern believer might also profitably
contemplate: "The final belief is to believe in a fiction which you know to be a
fiction, there being nothing other." Joseph Schumpeter, the Harvard economist, put
the thought with more prosaic eloquence: "To realize the relative validity of one's
convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly, is what distinguishes a civilized man
from a barbarian."
STEVEN ENGLUND is completing a study of the political significance of the idea of
"La Nation" in French history.
Notes
I would like to thank Peter Ochs, Vincent Curcio, Patrick Jordan, and Paul Bauman for
their suggestions.
1. [Back to text] Translated by Oscar
Burge. Published as Le desenchantement du monde, une histoire politique de la religion
(Paris: Gallimard, 1985). Gauchet is professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales.
2. [Back to text] Favorably reviewing God:
The Evidence for First Things, Edward Oakes, S.J. nevertheless concedes he is made
uncomfortable by Glynn's "feel good" arguments in favor of the religion of
Christ. Granting similarities more apparent than real between Glynn and Pascal, Oakes adds
mordantly, "we must be content with the apologists our age deserves."
3. [Back to text] Berger asks, "How
long can institutions based on an alleged certainty survive in the pluralistic situation
that constantly challenges that certainty?" Thinking, perhaps, of a Glynn, he
replies, "I think the answer must be that they too can survive -- and perhaps for a
long time, but with very great difficulty."
4. [Back to text]The Un-Marxian
Socialist: A Study of Proudhon. Translated by R. E. Scantlebury. London: Sheed
& Ward, 1948. Re-issued by Octagon Books, 1978. The book originally appeared in 1945
(Seuil) as Proudhon et le christianisme. See also Philip Rieff, "A Jesuit
Looks at Proudhon: Competition in Damnation," The Modern Review 3,
no. 2 (January 1950): 166-71.
Queering Church, Churching Queers
by Robin Hawley Gorsline
The debates about Christianity and sexuality rage everywhere today. Among many gay,
lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people -- those I'm calling queer -- inside the
church, the conventional wisdom is that the loudest voices are those which claim to speak
with complete doctrinal and biblical authority in condemnation of sexual variety, and
especially against the morality of homosexuality. On those occasions when the story of an
individual queer within the church becomes public it is usually over the matter of
same-sex unions or ordination, and the focus is often on the struggle between, on the one
side, the "orthodox" claiming to uphold the Bible and the tradition, against, on
the other, straight liberals (also claiming to be within the tradition) and their gay
allies, each struggling to prove the other wrong.
Queers outside the church often cite these media portrayals of the church as proof that
it is the most homophobic institution in our society, and as support for their view that
the sooner queers get out of church, and the sooner it loses its remaining power to shape
sexual morality, the better. These critics often exhibit impatience with queer Christians,
sometimes going so far as to assert that remaining in the church is a sign of deep-seated
internalized homophobia. Sometimes this connection between religious belief and
internalized homophobia is accurate.
There is more to the story than these media-based views would suggest, however. Indeed,
there are distinctively queer voices within the church, and two recent books go far in
showing the creativity now energizing queers within Christianity. In the process, they
also offer views of Christianity which differ in important -- dare we say fundamental --
respects from those who oppose a queer presence in the church, as well as those who argue
for Christian tolerance of queers. Neither work is without significant limitations, but
each offers important resources for queer Christians and those among their allies who are
willing to entertain the possibility of a Christianity not only tolerant of the sexually
different but also a Christianity changed, indeed made better and more whole, by the
contributions of queers.
Kathy Rudy, an assistant professor in women's studies at Duke University, offers the
more daring book. Her Sex and the Church: Gender, Homosexuality, and the
Transformation of Christian Ethics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999, 240pp., $22.00
[cloth]) offers several arresting arguments which can help the reader think carefully
about several kinds of religious orthodoxy, both the Christian right-wing variety and its
liberal, tolerance-based relation. The first argument, namely that for the Christian Right
gender is the first organizing principle of theology, is not exactly radical, having been
articulated by many feminist theologians, but it grounds the entire book. From here, Rudy
describes the contemporary right's reliance on the traditional family, its resulting
fervent opposition to alternative visions of family, and the deleterious effects of both.
She also shows how liberal Christians, and other promoters of tolerance, fail to combat
this insidiously genderized theological vision and, indeed, reiterate it themselves.
Rudy is consciously sex-positive, a position sure to earn her the enmity of the Right
(and probably others). She argues that "sex is ethical when it opens God's world to
others." In her view, the way to evaluate sexual acts is not whether they are based
on same-sex or other-sex attraction and activity (she is very critical of genitally based
sexual ethics) but rather whether they are based on hospitality and what she calls
"unitivity" -- i.e., how much they help us "welcome the stranger into our
church and into our life with God."
Thus, unlike most Christian observers, including many queer and feminist theologians,
she refuses to interpret non-monogamous queer sex practices -- activities which,
especially among men in pre-AIDS days, took place in bathhouses, public rest rooms, and
parks, and today find expression in sex clubs and house sex parties -- as merely desperate
attempts at sexual gratification in a hostile world. Instead, she contends that these
activities are often, although not always, essential elements in community building and
that at least some queer practices of "communal sex" may be pleasing
to God.
Even more daringly, she makes an explicit connection between these communitarian
activities and the traditional Christian emphasis on building up the Body of Christ,
contending that the church could learn much from a group of people who, because they are
so often without family support, base their social and emotional existence on membership
in community. In this regard, her critique of the heterosexist model of family as a
privatizing, anti-communitarian institution is particularly acute.
Despite her pro-sex attitudes, however, Rudy will not please many queer Christians with
her argument that identities such as "gay" or "lesbian" or
"queer" -- even "male" or "female" -- should be cast aside.
"Our primary identification is and ought to be Christian; any identification that
takes precedence over our baptism is to be avoided." She bases this contention on an
insight most clearly articulated by queer theorists, namely their critique of the
categories "gay" and "straight" -- and even "bisexual" -- as
natural and fixed. By siding with queer theory in this regard, she stakes out a position
at odds with that argued by other queer Christians and their friends within mainline
Protestantism and liberal Catholicism -- namely that these categories are ordained by God.
Accepting the fluidity of sexual categories and identities advanced within queer theory,
Rudy argues that Christians are first and foremost called to be people of God -- to
eschew, following Jesus and Paul, the labels and histories which divide us -- and take on,
through baptism, new life in Christ, to become "new people, with a new and radically
different ontology."
Rudy would have done well to develop her themes more fully, but she has achieved much
in these pages. Especially valuable is her continuing critique of the narrowness of
theological worldviews based on gender. Further, her positive view of queer "communal
sex" is an important addition to a generally one-sided debate about the morality of
non-monogamous sex practices. However, she fails to account for the many queer men who do
not find their communally based sex lives emotionally or spiritually satisfying. At the
same time, her claims about the need to jettison all identities save that of Christian
appear not only unrealistic but even counter-intuitive in the present age. Certainly, the
Right would like queers to stop talking about sexuality, to stop practicing same-sex sex,
and indeed simply to go out of existence. Rudy's proposal could easily be transformed into
a denial of human difference instead of her desired outcome of greater hospitality. One
can almost hear the eerie echoes of many critics of early "gay liberation" who
decried the fact that the love that dared not speak its name seemed unable to shut up.
Further, by failing to consider the impact of her anti-identity theory on the victims of
U.S. white supremacy, she has perpetuated the racial myopia of much queer theory.
The contributors to the other book, Religion Is a Queer Thing: A Guide to the
Christian Faith for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered People, edited by
Elizabeth Stuart (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1998, 152pp., $15.95 [paper]), don't
recommend giving up queer identity. Theirs is a collection of short essays
unapologetically determined to help queer Christians find our own theological voice -- a
voice which, in the words of Elizabeth Stuart, will "destabilize the notion of what
constitutes Christianity and a Christian by refusing to accept on trust that a white,
straight, male Christianity is the sole Christian truth."
Stuart and her four colleagues, all from Great Britain, ground their essays in the
traditions of liberation theology and especially in feminist theology, although they do
not do so uncritically. The short essays touch on a wide variety of theoretical and
practical matters. No scholar will find new facts or interpretations here, but nearly
anyone with an interest in theological queer liberation would be buoyed by the authors'
commitment to liberation and optimism about its achievement, even in the face of
intransigent opposition from the Christian Right and often lackluster support from
Christian moderates and liberals.
I said above that Rudy's book is the more daring, but no one ought to deny the courage
of the essays offered by Stuart and her colleagues. In fact, its best use would be as a
sourcebook for a Christian adult education series on queer theology -- and that would take
considerable courage in most churches on a Sunday morning!
Both works reveal a theological sophistication within queer Christian circles that
moves us well beyond the important early works of John McNeill and others who argued, from
a necessarily defensive posture at the time, for tolerance of gay men and lesbian women.
Now, instead of tolerance, these authors are talking about how the growth of a
distinctively queer theological sensibility is changing the church and the world.
Regrettably, both books largely ignore racial and class divisions among queers, a
reflection of the white supremacy which continues to contaminate queer politics and
theory. At the same time, the carefully reasoned critiques of salient points in the
theological work of Carter Heyward, Gary Comstock, and Robert Goss show that theologizing
within the queer communities is gaining maturity and impact.
That most church leaders, and certainly the religious and mainstream secular media,
have not yet registered the changes happening within queer Christendom -- indeed that
there is a queer Christendom, perhaps one could say, a "Queendom of God" -- is
yet one more sign that insurgencies often achieve a great deal before those supposedly in
charge even notice. These two books help us to continue to "act up"
theologically.
ROBIN HAWLEY GORSLINE is completing his doctoral dissertation on the life and work of
James Baldwin and Audre Lorde for anti-racist, pro-same-sex theologizing (at Union
Theological Seminary [New York]).
The Bible as a Site for Struggle:
Rethinking Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
by Marie Sabin
The title of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's new book, Sharing Her Word: Feminist
Biblical Interpretation in Context (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. 232pp. $23.00
[paper]) alludes to a speech by Wisdom's suitor who seeks, among other benefits,
"renown in sharing her words" (Wis. Sol. 8:17-18). The occasion for its writing
is the twenty-fifth anniversary of two inaugurating events of feminist studies in
religion. Both title and occasion are carefully chosen to achieve two of Schüssler
Fiorenza's underlying purposes: first, to establish her own position as one of the
founding mothers of feminist theology; second, to utilize biblical texts and traditions as
tools for empowerment.
In respect to the first purpose, the book is largely a retrospective; Schüssler
Fiorenza recapitulates many of her earlier themes and theories, refining definitions as
she does so, and pointing out the ways in which she feels she has been misunderstood. Over
and against a younger generation of postmodern scholars, for example, who consider the
term "religious feminist" to be an oxymoron, she insists that "for millions
of wo/men [the spelling is intended to include marginalized men as well as all women]
religion still provides a framework of meaning that is not just alienating or oppressive
but also self-affirming and liberating" (27). This theme, which has been central to
Schüssler Fiorenza's work from the start, is given new urgency here because it is
directed not only at the postbiblical feminists of the past, but at her current critics.
*
As she has done before, Schüssler Fiorenza defends the biblical texts as a potentially
liberating force by stressing their ambiguity. Repeating much of the argument and language
of her Discipleship of Equals (New York: Crossroad, 1993), she notes first how
both the gospels and the prophets are sources of her own vision of a liberated humanity.
She states that "well-being and inclusiveness are the hallmarks of the gospel"
(114); she finds in the gospels "a challenge to relinquish all claims to the power of
domination over others" (115). She finds behind the Jesus movements "a radical
Jewish democratic vision. It is the vision of the basileia, of G*d's alternative
society and world that is free of domination and does not exclude anyone" [[The
spelling is intended "to visibly destabilize our way of thinking and speaking about
G*d."] (115).
Yet Schüssler Fiorenza also sees biblical texts as sources legitimating oppression,
and for that reason she would separate herself from those religious feminists who, she
thinks, simply excuse antifeminist statements in the Bible by calling them "
'time-conditioned,' a misuse of scripture, or a false way of quoting the Bible" (52).
She thinks they overlook the fact that some texts "were originally written with the
intention of inculcating kyriarchal relations of domination ['kyriarchal' is her word
for all oppressive relationships] and to legitimate these relations as ordained by
God" (52). As a way of recognizing that the Bible works both for and against
liberation, she suggests using a method of "dialectical engagement with the biblical
heritage" (53).
*
Schüssler Fiorenza thus places herself in a highly tensed position, on the one hand
defending the Bible against the postmodernists, and on the other hand refusing to identify
herself with those she calls biblical "apologists." In reacting to the latter,
she declares that while her vision of emancipation is rooted in the Bible and not the
Enlightenment (81), her immediate framework does not come from the Bible but from human
experience: "The notion of wo/men's emancipatory struggles for dignity, authority,
and self-respect are the key to the epistemological/hermeneutical frame of meaning that
determines my work" (79). By way of further nuance, she distinguishes her
"critical feminist interpretation for liberation" from an academic "gender
studies" approach (79) because she is intent on not merely understanding the biblical
text, but on using it.
Although Schüssler Fiorenza deplores any division between the women's movement and the
academy (13-14), she makes it unmistakably clear that she does not identify with the
contemplative focus of the academic, but rather with the advocacy stance of the social
activist. She positions her work within the paradigm of liberation theologies, noting that
along with them, she seeks a change in the task of interpretation: "the task of
interpretation is not just to understand biblical texts and traditions but to change
Western idealist hermeneutical frameworks, individualist practices, and sociopolitical
relations" (78). The change she sets as the ultimate aim of interpretation is no less
than the re-creation of the political world, the creation of an "ekklesia of
wo/men"[i.e., a fully democratic gathering of all marginalized people].
"The notion of the ekklesia of wo/men seeks to embody the diverse
feminist-democratic struggles to overcome kyriarchal oppression traversed by racism, class
exploitation, hetero-sexism, and colonialist militarism, and to claim these struggles as
the political ecclesial site from which to speak" (131). Specifically she states that
her own work "has attempted to reconceptualize the act of biblical interpretation as
a moment in the global praxis for liberation" (76).
Locating her hermeneutical lens "within wo/men's struggles for survival," she
posits scripture not as a norm but as "a site of struggle over religious meaning
and/or theological authority" (160). It is in keeping with this notion of the Bible
as a place where political battles are fought, that she proposes various hermeneutical
methods designed to foster a double-sided approach of deconstruction and reconstruction.
Particularly in the second half of her book, she proposes some hermeneutical models and
applies her theory.
To show what she means by "a hermeneutics of indeterminacy," Schüssler
Fiorenza summarizes a variety of interpretations that have been given to Mark's
presentation of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30). Not intending, however, to
validate "an endless play of meaning in which each reading has equal standing,"
she moves on to "the need for a hermeneutics of evaluation" (130). The criteria
she chooses for making her evaluation are those of political change: "Diverse
interpretations must be evaluated as to whether they advocate kyriarchal or liberationist
values and whether they reinscribe patterns of prejudice and discrimination or other,
emancipatory visions of transformation" (130).
Schüssler Fiorenza further relates this process of evaluation to her idea of an "ekklesia
of wo/men" who "must present interpretive 'cases,' strategies and their
ramifications as well as evaluative principles and theoretical models for public
discussion, deliberation, and debate" (134). While she may be assuming here only
women who agree with her, I take her description as a kind of open invitation to other
women to speak, and in response, I feel obligated -- indeed compelled -- to express my
questions and disagreements, and my dismay with where her approach to the Bible is
taking us.
Let me note at the outset that my criticisms do not proceed from a context that is
markedly different from Schüssler Fiorenza's own: I speak as a Catholic woman who is also
a biblical scholar, and as a human being concerned for the well-being of all people. I
share, moreover, her biblically inspired vision of an inclusively just society. I value
her insistence that the Bible should be a liberating force, and I quite agree with her
premise that the Bible should not be read in a fundamentalist way. I do not fall, I think,
into any of the categories of her usual critics, and I did not open this book with any
prior hostility. Indeed, I hoped to be stimulated by it as I have by other writings of
hers in the past. The dismay I felt upon completing it sent me back to her earlier books
to make sure that it was she, and not I, who had changed.
*
Returning first to In Memory of Her, I found that it did in fact contain some
seeds of her present theory, but not of her present form of exegesis. In her first book,
for example, she also spoke of a "hermeneutics of suspicion"; but there her
"suspicion" was that women had played a substantial role at the beginning of
Christianity; the hermeneutic was aimed at recovering this history. Now Fiorenza
specifically states that "a hermeneutics of suspicion does not have the task of
unearthing or uncovering historical or theological truth but of disentangling the
ideological workings of andro-kyriocentric language" (90). In short, she has moved
from crediting the text with some intrinsic worth that should be respected, to seeing it
only as a set of politically charged words which she is free to remold and manipulate as
she pleases.
The ultimate point of disagreement between us, I suspect, is how we regard the Bible as
a sacred text. But more immediate to my concerns is how we regard the sacredness of any
text -- i.e., whether or not it is appropriate, in reading any document, to dismiss the
relevancy of historic context, authorial purpose, and the rhetorical elements of genre,
and simply impose one's own meaning. Schüssler Fiorenza implies such an imposition when
she approvingly cites Alicia Suskin Ostriker's "hermeneutics of desire," and
defines it as meaning that "you see what you want to see" (106). It is here I
need to protest: if that indeed is to be your stance, then why bother with the text at
all? If "reader-response" theory -- the notion that the reader in some way
completes the text -- is not modified by some acknowledgment of value in both writer and
text, is not serial monologue the logical outcome?
It is particularly that kind of monological result that I find dismaying in Schüssler
Fiorenza's present exegesis. A striking example is provided in the contrast between her
current reading of the Syrophoenician episode and her earlier one (which she herself
recounts). In In Memory of Her, she employed a "tradition-historical
reading" in which she "proposed that the story's controversy is best situated
historically in Galilean missionary beginnings. Although the Syrophoenician respects the
primacy of the children of Israel, she nevertheless makes a theological argument against
limiting the Jesuanic inclusive table-community to Israel alone. That such a historical
argument is placed in the mouth of a wo/man gives us a clue to the historical leadership
of wo/men in opening up the Jesus movement to gentiles" (127). While such a reading
does not consider the rhetorical aspects of irony and wit and playful tone (all of which I
think are at work in Mark's construction of this scene), it is nonetheless one which
wrestles with the original meaning of the text. The contextualization suggests a
theological purpose to the Markan dialogue. Now, however, while Schüssler Fiorenza does
not entirely disown her earlier view, she has chosen to make the modern idea of a
liberated woman her only lens for seeing, and so she can complain: "Although this is
one of the few gospel stories in which a female character is accorded 'voice,' the final
promise. . . . gives the last word to Jesus and underscores that the
authority of these texts rests with the 'master' voice of Jesus" (123-24).
I am not sure if I understand the ultimate implications of this statement: that the
woman should have the last word, that Jesus should not be so "masterful," that
the gospel should be written about women rather than Jesus? Schüssler Fiorenza herself
says later that she hopes to have shown "that a critical evaluative process of
interpretation for liberation does not reduce the historical and textual richness of the
Bible in general and of the story of the Syrophoenician in particular to abstract
theological or ethical principles, timeless norms, or ontologically immutable
archetypes" (129) -- but what could be more reductive than a repetitive insistence
that every passage say the same thing?
This repetitiveness is unmistakably apparent in her treatment of five parables in Luke.
She deals first with the parable of the persistent widow whose perseverance ultimately
prevails upon even an unjust judge to give her justice (Luke 18:1-8). She first explains:
"The meaning of the story in the Gospel of Luke is quite clear: it is a parable about
the practice of persistent prayer, similar to Luke's stories of the importunate neighbor
in Luke 11:5-8 and of the Pharisee and the toll collector in Luke 18:9--14. In its Lukan
form, the judge becomes a G*d figure and the parable reasons from the lesser (the judge)
to the greater (G*d): if the judge reacts to the pestering of the widow, how much more
will G*d respond to the prayers and outcries of G*d's people" (154). Nonetheless, in
spite of her understanding of the parable in the context of Luke's theology, she chooses
to read it differently: "When read in a situation of violence against wo/men, the
Lukan version does not empower wo/men to resist such violence but encourages them to pray
harder so that G*d will come to their rescue. It fosters a spirituality of quietism that
accepts violence and in 'typically feminine' fashion waits for the 'all-powerful man' to
come to the rescue" (154).
While I am aware that other feminists have criticized the Bible on these terms, I am
surprised to find Schüssler Fiorenza accepting their arguments. Her basic critique of
biblical "apologists" is that they try to defend texts which were explicitly
designed to foster relationships of domination; the implied corollary, I thought, was that
she only objected to a defense which blurred the original function. Moreover, she also
critiques the postmodernists on the grounds that they have overlooked the ways in which
the Bible has been, and can be, liberating. From those premises I expected her to focus
her negative criticism on passages which explicitly promote a hierarchical order or
exclusivity. It is surprising to me that she consistently chooses to object to passages
(like this one and the Syrophoenician woman) in which a woman in fact comes out ahead. I
am surprised, too, by her insistence that the unjust judge represents God, despite Luke's
clear distinction between them. Finally, I am appalled by the suggestion that prayer to
God somehow precludes resistance to evil. Luke's gospel -- never mind the psalmists, the
prophets, and in fact most of both the Jewish and Christian scriptures -- shows the usual
coincidence of both. It requires a willful muting of biblical tradition to confuse prayer
with passivity.
Schüssler Fiorenza concludes her book by offering a "reconstruction" of this
parable along with three others, all deliberately chosen because they "have wo/men as
their central agents and characters" (181). All are presented, moreover, as
"Wisdom" stories, with Wisdom understood as "the Goddess Sophia." In
this superimposed framework, every story is forced into being an allegory about women and
justice. The judge "embodies a corrupt justice system," and the persistent widow
is the image of "Divine Wisdom as a strong woman who insistently works for
justice" (182). Luke's suffering widow, in other words, is changed here into a good
divine power who triumphs over an evil male power. Is that not "reinscribing gender
dualism?" Luke's emphasis on prayer is simply discarded.
The parable of the leaven (Matt. 13:33; Luke 13:20--21) "images the
basileia. . . .as being brought about by the 'fomenting' and 'corrupting'
activity of Divine Sophia who is at work still today in and through feminist
theologies" (181). Here Schüssler Fiorenza ignores Luke's original usage: the woman
baker as an image of God, and the leaven as a metaphor for the subtle, hidden manner of
God's grace. She simply imposes her own notions in their place and although she speaks of
"imagery," she in fact replaces Luke's images with her own theory and
abstractions.
*
She similarly translates the parable of the woman sweeping her house for a lost coin
(Luke 15:8--10) into her preferred message: it becomes a story about a woman searching for
Divine Wisdom whose celebration upon finding it "alludes to the joy of recovering
lost emancipatory Christian traditions of wo/men's agency and struggle" (181). Luke's
original meaning, in which the lost coin stands for the sinner, and the joyful finder for
God, has been totally obliterated.
Finally, she sums up the point of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matt.
25:1-13) as a warning "to those who engage in movements and struggles against
injustice to plan for the long haul" (182). Certainly Matthew's parable implies the
need for faithful perseverance, but precisely because it is a parable and not a prose
statement, it is far more suggestive than a simple warning.
These four examples attest that to Schüssler Fiorenza, "reconstruction" of
the text means replacement of its original meaning with another. The replacement,
moreover, adheres to a previously determined system of ideas. Instead of functioning the
way she herself says a parable should -- "to puzzle and startle hearers" (181)
-- these parables are reduced to a single message which could just as readily be stated
apart from the text. Advocacy has crowded out critical nuance, and the full rich
complexity of the texts has been totally lost. One can only be reminded of that wise adage
of Abraham Maslow: "To the one who has only a hammer, all the world looks like a
nail."
*
The reductive effect of this mode of reading is taken to its most extreme in Schüssler
Fiorenza's reading of 1 Corinthians 13, where she challenges the value of Paul's
encomium of love. In this chapter (which is subtitled "Love Endures Everything -- Or
Does It?") Schüssler Fiorenza states that she is not interested in the original
meaning or function of the text, but only in "how the central Christian principle of
love can serve to sustain wo/men's internalized oppression today although the text in its
original context may not have done so at all" (139). She critiques Paul's words
accordingly: "Traditional Christian preaching on love tends to reinforce this
[modern] cultural ethos of romantic love, feminine calling, and sacrificial
service. . . This conflation of traditional notions of submission and headship
with modern notions of romantic heterosexual love is at the heart of
patriarchal-kyriarchal relations of oppression today. Domestic violence against wo/men and
their children is the logical outcome" (140). In addition to wondering if we inhabit
the same modern world (where is the culture calling to "sacrificial service?"),
one has to wonder if we are reading the same words: "Love is patient; love is
kind. . . It does not insist on its own way." To say that these words
foster violence is surely to stand the text on its head!
Schüssler Fiorenza justifies her reading because of the ways she believes the text has
been abused: "When preached to wo/men and subordinated men, central Christian values
such as love and forgiveness help to sustain relations of domination and to foster the
acceptance of domestic and sexual violence" (151). Once again I am aware that
Schüssler Fiorenza is not the originator of this idea that the preaching of biblical love
has, in certain circumstances, caused women to suffer. Nor do I doubt that such cases
exist. Nor would I ever condone them. But there seems to be a terrible and tragic illogic
at work here when the clear misuse of a text is made the basis for judging it. Obviously
the words are aimed at every human being, and if they were taken to heart, no man
could use them to justify a hostile act against a woman (or anyone else, for that matter).
If one can take words which exhort to loving forbearance and twist them into words which
foster its opposite, then language has lost all power to communicate. If it is argued back
that this is precisely what has happened, then should not the task be to correct the
abuse, not throw out the text? Is this not an instance in which Schüssler Fiorenza should
be pointing to the text's potential power to create an inclusively loving community? It is
not Paul or his text that are abusive here, but those who have used it perversely.
The dimensions of this perversity are not only hermeneutical but theological. Following
the logic of her argument, Schüssler Fiorenza also objects to "ritualizing the
suffering and death of Jesus" (151). Again her lens is limited to that of the person
who has been abused because of an abusive reading of the texts: "If one extols the
silent and freely chosen suffering of Christ who was 'obedient to the point of death'
(Phil. 2:8) as an example to be imitated by those suffering from domestic and sexual
abuse, one does not simply legitimate but one also facilitates violence against
wo/men and children" (151). [The italics are mine, to emphasize that they were
never intended to be so used.] It requires a substantial effort, I think, to distort
the biblical image of Jesus' unjust death into practical support for the perpetrators of
human injustice. Those who do so seem to overlook both Christian theology and practical
piety. To the ordinary Christian, Jesus' death does not teach that suffering is desirable,
much less that it is permissible to cause it. On the contrary, among its many facets of
meaning, it teaches what Abraham Heschel calls "the pathos" of God -- namely,
that when we are in pain, God shares it. In addition, it is important to bear in mind that
in Christian tradition, Jesus' death is never mentioned without his resurrection; the two
are inseparably linked. What the Christian is called to imitate is not acquiescence to
evil (Jesus' suffering is never that), but trust in God's will to goodness. When
Schüssler Fiorenza calls upon the Christian Church to "repent" for having
taught "unconditional love" (152), she seems to me to have crossed a line from
hermeneutical reductiveness to theological emptiness.
At the heart of these destructive positions, I think, is a serious ethical lapse as
well: the failure to accord to the words of one's neighbor the respect one would like for
one's own. Such respect does not, of course, require agreement, but it does insist that
one try to respond to the other in terms of that person's self-understanding. To
predetermine meaning -- "to see what you want to see" -- is to arrogate to
oneself all truth and refuse to allow for the possibility of learning from another. But
the practice of justice surely includes "doing justice" to someone
else's text.
*
Observing that principle would not allow one to ride roughshod over what Hans Gadamer
has called "the meaning behind the text" -- its original context and purpose and
rhetorical thrust. If one then wants to consider "the meaning in front of the
text" -- its relevance for today -- one does so with full awareness and respect for
its primary meaning. David Tracy, applying Gadamer's "game of conversation" to
the reading of scripture (A Short History of the Interpretation of the Bible,
Fortress, 1984), suggests that it must involve a risk-taking exchange between reader and
text. He adds, "It is not only our present answers but also our questions which are
risked when we enter a conversation with a classic text. There is no way, prior to the
conversation itself, to determine the 'correct' theological interpretation of the biblical
text" (173).
That basic principle of risk-taking dialogue would serve the biblical interpreter well,
I believe, for it would open the eyes of the reader to the wide range of perspectives
which jostle each other within the bound book we call "scripture," voices which
speak to one another through direct and indirect allusion, sometimes in harmony and
sometimes in discord, but never in isolation and always in relationship. So
perceived, the Bible itself becomes a model for the kind of "dialectical
engagement" Schüssler Fiorenza seeks; in itself it already models the space for
spiritual nuance and theological argument she dreams of in her imagined "ekklesia."
As such, it is indeed a "site for struggle," but not one, as she would have it,
between sterile ancient formulas and contemporary experience, or between an ancient male
elite and the modern displaced person. No matter who in fact composed its individual
passages, the Bible taken as a whole is an abundant creation, allowing for a whole range
of human voices (including those of women and the marginalized) to speak to each other
about their respective experiences of the divine presence. I thus see the Bible as sacred
in style as well as in source: inspired by multiple and various experiences of the one
God, it takes its shape as a respectful (if not always concurring) dialogue between
neighbors.
I would like to maintain my own respect for Schüssler Fiorenza's work. I cannot help
but admire her passion for justice, which she concedes is biblically rooted. In short, I
support her cause but deplore her mode of imposing it on the biblical texts. I would like
to confront her with a memory of her earlier self -- which, somewhat in the manner of
Jewish midrash, was intent on searching out and retrieving hidden meanings in scripture
and illumining their relevance for our own time. In that enterprise I found her to be a
fresh voice in the great conversation which the Bible still inspires. I would gladly hear
that voice again.
MARIE SABIN is an independent scholar whose most recent article in Cross Currents
was "Women Transformed: The Ending of Mark Is the Beginning of Wisdom,"
Summer 1998.
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