Oopen Letter to Religious Leaders, re Faith

Special to The National Catholic Reporter draft 6.2

May 31. Feast of the Visitation; Anniversary of the Magnificat.

“Take Care , lest the light in you become darkness.”: Luke 11:35

An Open Letter to All Religious Leaders concerning the Crises of Faith in the World.

“All Catholics are going to hell,” my future mother-in-law once announced with conviction to her daughter. “But mother,” said the young woman, now my wife, “there sure a lot of Catholics in the world.” Her mother quickly replied, “Honey, heaven won’t be crowded!” “But how can you judge so easily?” Janette asked. “Honey, it is my Christian duty to judge others,” was her mother’s certain answer.

Burned by a devout mother who ran off to church, leaving her as first born in charge of four younger siblings, Janette swore she would never marry a minister. Luckily for me and our children, they both mellowed.

Christians and believers of many stripes assume their faith gives them the moral high ground and a sense of entitlement to judge another’s faith and behavior. Faith is easily taken over by our Dark Side. This process, I propose, is a main source of much conflict, violence and war in our world. Maybe we cannot have peace in the world until we have religious peace.

I offer three views: 1) How is faith so easily taken over by our Ego, or “Dark Side?” 2) What is genuine and authentic listening? and 3) What does our Catholic faith community need to face the world with love, understanding and service? I suggest that our American experience has something distinctive and urgent to offer religious leaders and the Vatican and Catholic theology.

Faith is often regarded as an entitlement by many, as providing the moral high ground from which to make many judgments about others’ faith sincerity and certain destination. We can hold our faith so fiercely that it seems that everyone who believes differently must be outside salvation. They must be further from God than we are.


Herein, I propose, is the tragic flaw of all the great world religions., resulting [ower is preferred to love. Ideology trumps service/reason/science. Hubris wins over humility. Culture triumphs over principle. Ego discounts learning. Entitlement spurns listening to the People God. Control gets the better of honesty. Emotion rules reflection. Ultimately, the darkness of pride drives out the Light in far too much of religious history. Including today, vastly, on all sides.

What happens? We take the absoluteness belonging to God and transfer it to Our Way to God. Then we are ready to judge others. . Faith has been taken over by the Dark Side of human nature. There may be no more pressing issue for world peace than facing this blindness.

Consider that Faith is a supernatural gift we cannot earn or deserve or even reach by reason. Aquinas and the Scholastics only showed that faith was not contrary to reason.

Because faith cannot be earned or deserved, it can be accepted only with humble gratitude as invitation to a new and different way of life. The light of faith is the transforming grace that can change everything. “How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed.” Lyrics of Amazing Grace.

However, when we take what is a free gift and use it to judge another’s free gift, faith has been taken over by the ego, the Dark Side of human nature we all possess.

God’s love never intended the free and extraordinary gift of faith be employed to discount another’s different gift.

Repeatedly in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus scolds his disciples: “I have been with you all this time and you still do not understand”. How long has it taken us in this country to understand the full implications of our Bill of Rights? It is possible that Christians have long employed faith to prove their superiority over others, creating conflict, violence and wars. Jefferson’s Separation of Church and State in the First Amendment addressed this long abuse.

To use faith as a platform to judge others’ faith as of lesser value makes faith into an idol rather than a precious gift. Idols are jealous of other idols. Faith, according to Jesus, is given us for loving service, to risk ourselves in loving the least, last, lost, and lame, to see Christ in everyone, without exception. Jesus makes this quite clear when he describes how the sheep will be separated from the goats in Matthew 25, vv. 36 ff.

The early Christian community did not grow by creed, code, cult and papal power. From that small Palestinian sect of Jewish Christians to become a majority in the Roman Empire by the time of Constantine, was a growth of approximately 25 % per year, according to demographers. “See how those Christians love one another,” said the pagans, “See how they care for the widow, the orphan and the poor.” Christianity was a movement without need of a strong papacy. Doctrines such as “Outside the church there is no salvation,” Apostolic Succession and creeds were not necessary

However unique is our faith, we cannot say that it is objectively superior to another. That is taking the absoluteness that belongs to God alone and making our gift of faith, our way to God an absolute rule for others. Subjectively faith can be absolute for oneself, but making it superior to others is forgetting the extraordinary giftedness of our faith. It is also a prideful challenge to the Providence of God, who is the source of all blessing and love.

For the word faith, substitute Grace, as faith is, in fact, a free, unparalleled and undeserved gift of grace. To use such a gift of grace to say: “When you do not believe as I do, you are further from God than I am” is an outrage and perhaps even a insult against God’s freedom to give or not to give. .

Jesus said repeatedly “Your faith has saved you.” He did not say, “because your faith is like mine, you are saved.” To insist that our story of faith is better than another story is to judge both the light and leadings of another human being. It is an arrogant misuse of that supernatural gift of grace that is faith. Moreover, to use faith as “power over” others is to replicate the vast misuse of faith by many others in the world today.

“Take care lest the light in you become darkness.” Jesus said in Luke 11:35. For that reason, we do well to pay heed to Paul’s advice to the church of Thessalonika: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances. Test everything; retain what is good. Refrain from every kind of evil.” (1 Thess 5:19-22)

Gregory of Nyssa, Saint and Bishop, Church Father of the Fourth Century, may have captured the redeeming phrase for us. “Concepts create idols, only wonder and awe can appreciate mystery.”


Next, let us examine the process of genuine and authentic listening. Having spent many thousands of hours listening as a family therapist, I offer some insights.

To listen well, one must set aside pre-conditions and assumptions to allow the different point of view of the other to be fully grasped. This kind of listening is difficult, a stretch, and one that can be maintained only by openness and willingness to be vulnerable. Martin Buber spoke of this process beautifully if mystically in his little book “I and Thou.” There is grace present and we are likely to be changed by this kind of listening.

But when one is convinced of the superiority of one’s faith, and that it is unique among Wisdom traditions, one cannot hear or tolerate divergent views. In this case one hears only what is acceptable and safe.

Moreover, we know now that we can see only what we are ready to see. Our Unconscious has “Lions at the gates of our awareness” that do not allow us to perceive what is actually there to others. Our preconceptions shape and blind us. One cannot accept or honor the amazing diversity of gifts among humans.

If a leader is insecure of what might come to awareness, one can demand an oath of unconditional obedience to one’s office as a pre-condition for making priests into bishops. Surely makes governing easier, but very limited and often blind.

No genuine authentic listening is possible when we believe that our faith is superior to that of others. This Dark Sid use of faith is true of many believers and all stripes of fundamentalists. Jesus warned against it, more than once.

Some would say that I am proposing that all religions are equal. I am not. What I am saying is that is God’s judgment to make, not ours, no matter how precious we hold our own faith. To say that someone else’s understanding of this Mystery we call God is less than ours is simply pride. God’s Love calls us to cherish our differences, brothers and sisters all. God seeks lovers, “since Love is Lord of heaven and earth..” (Hymn, How Can I Keep from Singing?)

Lastly, what does this Catholic faith community need and deserve in our modern world that we may respond more fully to God’s Love?

We need a servant leadership which models the loving service of Jesus. We need bridge building among Wisdom traditions for mutual understanding and respect. St. Benedict in his Holy Rule advised the Abbot to welcome the stranger who came to the gate, and even the youngest in the monastery, because Christ might speak though either.

The catholicity of our faith means that we must welcome the stranger, offering hospitality as did Abraham when he kept his tent open on all sides so he could see the traveler coming from a distance and have a feast prepared.

Our faith communities are strengthened by welcoming the diversity of gifts among us. We need canonical rights affirmed both in the parish and at the diocesan level. We want to see our leaders lead with love and hospitality. We need to welcome and embrace modern science, psychology, biblical research and build a theology of marriage upon a psychology of married love. There can be no conflict between faith and science. We are a community of thinking Catholics, no longer sheep.

A community is most healthy when all are active, feeling wanted and involved, and when each takes responsibility for the common welfare. Yves Congar, O.P. , one of the fathers whose writings helped bishops at Vatican II, said if Catholic hierarchy ever trusted and let loose the laity, we could have a second rebirth that would dwarf the first Pentecost.

We are created equal. The diversity of faiths among us does not make us unequal, inferior or superior. If we take the unconditional grace of faith and make it a requirement for others, we do not yet understand the enormity of the divine gift given us. We still do not understand that Jesus never intended his teaching to be used as “power over,” against others, nor against his own people and their traditions.

However, Catholics today have no rights face to face with the pastor or th bishop. Basically the bishop has the power of a feudal lord. He can do anything he pleases. The Association of the Rights of Catholics in the Church has sought to bring the collegial understanding of the Church into the reality of shared decision making and accountability. ARCC has developed and works to implement a Charter of the Rights of Catholics in the Church and a Proposed Catholic Constitution. They await a bishop with the vision ti share his decision making in order to empower the laity. (See website)

American Catholics desire a thinking faith community where these matters can be openly discussed, where we accept and welcome the divergent views of those around us, Protestant, Hebrew, Muslim, Buddhist and others. There is not one we cannot learn from. Grace abounds, lessons are everywhere, and “the most beautiful thing, in the universe” according to Einstein, “is the mysterious.” For the person of faith that is grace.

Do we Catholics want to be known by how we emulate, embrace, embody and celebrate the abounding grace and universality of God’s love? Are we led by Grace? Are we invited, enabled, empowered, and impelled to lead by love?

Which faith is better objectively is God’s judgment to make. We humans are pervasively and ultimately subjective, seeing reality as we are, not as it is.

Does it matter to this mystery we call God how we arrive, whether by catholic bus, Protestant train, Hebrew auto, Muslim caravan, Buddhist flight, or on foot after a perilous journey through many addictions? Our prideful posturing over our way being a better way does not praise the Mystery of Love by which we are surrounded.

Want proof that God does not care about the make or model of the faith vehicle you arrive in? we now know that faith is a health factor promoting well-being and healing regardless of the source of faith. Even medicine accepts faith as a health factor. As for healing from faith, God does not care about the particulars of your faith journey Examine psychoneruoimmunology and faith on the internet.

The formula is rather simple: Gather the People. Tell the Stories, Break the bread, Celebrate the Vision, and Welcoming he Stranger by Loving Service.
Without the last, the first four fail. We are going to be measured simply by Love, not by the means of travel.

If God is Love, the Holy Spirit, would God not be known by love? If this mystery we call God wants lovers, maybe, just maybe, all that counts in life is that we get there. And maybe, just maybe, Love does not care how we get there, how we arrive at Love, as long as we get there?

We are invited to sing with Mary her song: “My soul magnifies the Lord.” (Luke 1: 46). Grace summons us to honor those who sing a different song.


“See how those (you fill in the species) LOVE....!” What if this were the way we measured ourselves? +++

End

Note to editor: Paschal Baute, Ed. D. , is a married Catholic priest with three children and three grandchild/ is a priest of the Celtic Christian church, an old Catholic jurisdiction. My resume can be found at www.paschalbaute.com.
For much writing on the interface between religion and psychology google “Paschal Baute”