The Garden and the 1st and 2nd Stations

Monday of Holy Week.

Holy Week is upon us.  In his Life of Christ, Venerable Servant of God Fulton J. Sheen points out an aspect of the significance of the suffering and death of Jesus which we celebrate:

"Christ entered human existence under a form which was not natural to Him as Son of God.  This assuming of a human nature was a humiliation, an emptying, a stripping and a kenosis ["self-emptying"] of His glory.  The fundamental renouncement of His Divine glory created a physical condition of life which made Him appear like a man; His suffering and death were the logical consequences of this humiliation.  As God He could not suffer; as man He could" (Image Books, 1990).

Although we have seen and heard the story of Christ's death and resurrection countless times in our lives, I believe it is essential to continually return to these events and try to see them with new eyes.  Over the next few days I will be sharing some brief reflections on humility as it is exhibited in the various points along the Way of the Cross (along with the Agony in the Garden, for thematic and mathematical reasons).

The Agony in the Garden
The Gospel of Luke describes Jesus' fervent prayer on the Mount of Olives.  He enjoins His disciples to pray that they "may not undergo the test."  Earlier, Peter told Him that he was prepared to "go to prison and to die" with Jesus.  Instead, Peter would deny Him three times.  We are the disciples who wish to be there with Jesus, but who do not fully grasp the significance of the moment and instead grow tired and fall asleep.  We are like Peter, rashly stating our intention to do good (and be praised for the intention), but when the moment of action arrives we are unprepared.

In this moment in the garden, as in all things, Jesus is our example.  He prayed and sweated blood before the time of testing arrived.  Unlike Peter, Jesus prayed that the cup might pass from Him, although He was willing to do the will of the Father no matter the cost.  How often does our faithful prayer lead us to experience distress?  If it seldom does so, is it because we are not humble enough to realize how hard the test will be?

Lord, help us to pray more fervently with the humility of Your example in the garden.


The First Station:  Jesus is Condemned to Death
Pilate had judicial power over Jesus because God gave it to him.  The judicial system of the Roman Empire was relatively advanced and admirable in many ways (e.g., the restriction against stoning a woman caught in adultery:  the Romans were on the side of Jesus on that one).  However, Roman justice failed when Pilate gave Jesus over to be crucified, despite his assertion of Jesus' innocence on multiple occasions (Luke 23:4, 14, 22).

Human justice and man-made law is only a shadow of the true source of Justice, which is God.  Pilate made a show of doing the right thing, but in the end decided to do what would be easiest for himself.  The humble Jesus, standing silently before His accusers, spoke more loudly of the vanity of human law than any verbal argument could have done.  How often do we rest on the unfounded belief that human society can arbitrate justice infallibly?  Have we trusted too much in the benevolence and wisdom of governments and other institutions instead of getting involved ourselves?

Lord, help us to see the things that human beings have created with the eyes of humility.

The Second Station:  Jesus Takes Up His Cross
The cross was a horrible instrument of torture and execution.  It was as much a means of inflicting psychological pain as physical pain.  Isaiah 53:8-9 prophesied that Jesus would be taken away and counted among the wicked.  On the other hand, Christian mystics throughout the centuries have told us of the joy with which Christ took up His cross.  As the instrument of his suffering and death, it also became the instrument of our salvation.

Christ teaches us that to love is to joyfully embrace suffering for the sake of the beloved.  Joyful suffering is a theme we find running throughout the lives of the saints and all who seriously follow Jesus in their lives.  Suffering is a contradiction to the World, but to Christians it is the source of ultimate joy and peace.  How often have we been slow to embrace an inconvenient means of helping others?  How can we say that we love someone and yet begrudge them the pain of suffering?

Lord, help us always to humbly accept the crosses that You offer for the sake of our brothers and sisters.

Morality, Prudence and Law

The Boy Scouts of America have recently made it into the news for their decision (/non-decision) regarding openly gay scoutmasters.  The organization has, up to now, staunchly defended their traditional stance that one may not be both openly gay and a scoutmaster.  Whether the organization will stick with this policy will apparently be decided in May.  As usual, this post is not so much about the news itself, but will take a moment to explore some related concepts that underlie the situation.

Morality is a very misunderstood notion today if my experience as a professor of ethics is any indication.  Morality refers to ideas (or specific rules, if you care to make the distinction) of right and wring conduct.  A claim that something is moral is a claim that it is the right thing to do in a given situation; a claim that something is immoral is a claim that it is the wrong thing to do in a given situation.  Whether we act in accordance with morality as it is (rather than as we wish/believe it to be) will determine what kind of a person we will be--good or bad.  Our disposition toward morality will be a basis for God's judgment (Matthew 25:31-46) of our lives.

Prudence is another matter.  As one of the virtues, prudence means to be wise about how we conduct ourselves.  Prudence is not "pragmatism."  To be "pragmatic" suggests that we might do what is necessary to accomplish a goal without considering the moral consequences of the actions.  It is possible to be "pragmatic" and act in opposition to what is moral.  If fortitude is virtuous courage ordered to morally upright ends, prudence is virtuous ingenuity ordered to the same.  It is not possible to be prudent and support anything that is not moral.  Prudence instead finds the best way to accomplish morality.

The Law is, or should be, related to these two concepts.  The law, when it is good law, comes into being as a prudential reconstruction of morality together with a system of consequences (which should themselves be moral).  Good laws reflect the truth about what is moral, even though the law is not the same as morality.  Part of human development, even in the secular world of psychological study, is to grow into an appreciation of what the law is and then on to an appreciation of what the law is not.  If law were the final arbiter of what is moral, laws would not change. The law cannot develop itself; it must be developed by those who  see what is moral and can adapt the law to more closely resemble it.  Because the law comes into being by the agreement of individuals who may be right or wrong about morality, it is often prudent to allow individuals and organizations the freedom to make moral determinations for themselves.

Thus the paradox of "lived humility" comes into the picture again.  Humility requires an understanding that we are neither the arbiters nor even accurate judges of what is moral.  On the other hand, it also requires that we subordinate our own fear of sharing the Gospel to the evangelical directives of Christ.  What is truly moral did not come from us that we should be embarrassed to proclaim it to a world that disagrees. 

Let us pray that whatever the decision the Boy Scouts of America finally make, it will be in prudent support of what is moral. . . and that such decisions will remain legal.

Habemus Papam

We have a new pope!

In the midst of all the excitement that rightfully surrounded the conclave and the brief time spent watching for white smoke to waft over the Vatican, there were many minor annoyances that came to my attention.  I grew a little tired of the questions about who I thought should be pope (answer:  the choice of the Holy Spirit).  I wearied of the related question of who I expected to be pope (answer:  one of the cardinals, either a front runner in the newspapers, or someone unexpected, or someone in the middle of the pack). 

Slightly more interesting at first was the question of where I thought the new pope would take the Church (answer:  along the Way of the Cross).  It grew less interesting when I realized that most who ask the question are hoping for some kind of "relaxation" or even a spontaneous reversal of the Church's teaching on some difficult issue such as contraception, gay marriage, women's ordination, decentralization of authority, etc. (answer:  have you tried protestantism?). 

The point of this post is not to be overly critical of those who have not yet received the gift to see the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church for what it is.  In fact, these minor annoyances are really a sign that the world is full of people looking for answers to the deep questions in their lives.  The Way of the Cross is not an easy path, and there are so many voices that wish to lead us all in different directions. 

My purpose is, instead, simply to celebrate the election of our new pontiff and to enjoin you to pray with me for him, that the Holy Spirit may not only allow him to infallibly preserve the Faith and moral teaching of the Church, but to be a steadfast witness to the world of the love, joy, happiness and peace that only comes from God the Father through our Lord Christ Jesus.  And if our Holy Father Pope Francis is to be such a witness, let us not forget that we are called to be witnesses too (no matter how annoyed we might get at the questions).

May Pope Francis persevere in the Gift of Humility, and inspire us all to do the same!

The "Purpose" of God

Outside of post-modern philosophy, there is a difference between reality and purpose.  The way an object is used is quite different from the question of whether it exists or not.  A hammer exists, whether it is used to bang nails or break glass.  Concepts, however, are not quite so easy to sort out.  Does "love" exist no matter how it is used or expressed?

What about God?  Does God function as an object or a concept?

I recently read a "philosophical" review of the film The Life of Pi., a movie which recently won several Oscars.  I don't really know much about the story itself beyond what I gathered from the review (I have not read the book or seen the film and was reading the review to see if I would be interested.  Feel free to defend either work in a reply!), but what strikes me particularly from the review itself is the assertion that seems to be at the heart of much modern contempt for organized religion and certain knowledge of the existence of God.  Without going into detail about the story, here are the pertinent points from the review as I read them:  1) The Life of Pi suggests that belief in God is something that people do because they are desperate to make sense of the world around them, 2) The reviewer argues that those who simply choose not to concern themselves with God appreciate reality more than theists, and 3) The reviewer, along with many atheist-agnostics the world over, seems to think that this "reality factor" is a devastatingly clever argument against belief in God.

The initial assertion--that belief in God is a kind of coping mechanism--reveals an essential problem with how religion is perceived by many believers and non-believers alike.  There is certainly something comforting in the idea that there is a loving and benevolent God watching out for us from heaven somewhere.  Divorced from an awareness of our own sin and need for redemption, this idea of God can be very self-affirming.  However, those who think that this is all there is to God have not done a good job of reading their Bible.  Scripture is filled with instances of faithful people who are tested and tried.  In this way, the God who loves us is much like the parent who loves us enough to push us to grow and mature into responsible adults.  Sinners who know they are sinners should feel a strain in their relationship with God from time to time.  If you never feel that God is pushing you out of your comfort zone, it probably isn't God you are listening to.

The second assertion--that the non-believer is more engaged with reality--logically follows the assumption that believers are just out for some form of stress-relief.  In this view, religious practice is like watching an engrossing film or reading a fantasy novel.  True religious belief does something completely different.  A priest recently gave me some very good advice about my attitude toward reality.  He said, "reality is the only place where we can meet God."  In other words, it is not possible to receive the love of Christ and pass it along to others when we are not in the same world with them.  If it encourages anything, true Christian faith encourages us to engage more deeply with our neighbor because we should care about what is really happening to them.

Both of these assertions betray a woeful ignorance of orthodox Christian teaching and culture.  Only such ignorance can really explain the scornful attitudes with which Christianity  is treated (along with, to a lesser extent, other religious traditions).  This attitude is generally little more than a means of shutting down any intellectual discussion about the existence of God.  Unfortunately for the atheist, it is only too easy to turn the tables on their argument.  All that is needed is to point out that they would be more in touch with reality if they were right that there is no God.  Since there is a God, those who deny His existence are the ones who are out of touch.  It remains to prove which position is correct.

At the end of the day, the existence of God is not contingent on the purpose we put Him to in our thoughts and lives.  Before we grouse too much about the condescension of atheists, we might consider how much like them we are if we worship the "God of Our Purposes" instead of the God Who Is.

The Art of Misunderstanding

Farewell, Holy Father.

As you should already be aware, today marks the resignation and retirement of Pope Benedict XVI.  I would ask for the prayers of everyone that he may grow closer to Christ in his remaining years and that the college of cardinals be supple to the movements of the Holy Spirit in choosing his successor.

Many news outlets are justifiably interested in the process of the resignation of Pope Benedict, as they were in the last days of Pope John Paul the Great.  This news coverage is both flattering to those of us who deeply love our Catholic faith and the source of endless amusement.  Time Magazine has provided one such example of amusing speculation about how this whole situation will work out.  Apparently, Time believes that, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, retirement from the office of the papacy will make Pope Benedict more powerful than you can possibly imagine.  The term "uber-Pope" was invoked.

The obvious silliness of this scenario aside, the Time story represents a deep and near-complete misunderstanding of not only the papacy itself, but also of Joseph Ratzinger as a person.  The impetus for presuming this retirement to be some masterful power-play stems from the reputation that Pope Benedict has acquired in the media of being overly "conservative," and therefore desirous of absolute power and authority.  This reminds me of a story I read long ago, reprinted from somewhere in the Indianapolis Star, expressing how exasperated American Catholics were with Pope John Paul II.  According to the story, liberals loved the pope for his unfailing commitment to the poor; conservatives loved him for his hard line on pro-life issues.  On the other hand, liberals were supposed to hate him for his antiquated view of homosexual "marriage" and misogyny as to the question of women priests; conservatives were presumed to be disgusted with his message of generosity to the less fortunate and his preoccupation with the third world.

Both of the stories just mentioned are gross distortions of reality.  The problem is not merely that the authors are looking at the whole world through the lens of specifically American politics (although this is certainly at play).  It is a matter of artful--almost deliberate, if it were not in some ways sub-conscious--misunderstanding of what orthodox Catholicism means.  It is the same Holy Spirit that inspired John Paul II to reach out to those in heart-rending poverty and to defend the rights of the unborn child.  The same Holy Spirit inspired Benedict XVI to express Christianity as applying to all peoples regardless of their ethnicity and to call the Catholic Church the one certain foundation laid by Christ.

The Catholic Church represents a moderation that the World views as an extreme.  We are called to search for the unity behind the apparent contradictions.  If we want to understand the Church, and those heroes and living saints who best exemplify it, we must humble ourselves enough to remember that we are still children at the feet of our master Jesus Christ, who was even more a sign of contradiction in his time than Pope Benedict is in ours.

Seeing the Self through Humility and Pride

The figure to the left is a brief visual summary of some of the themes that have been discussed in this blog since its beginning.  The idea here is to represent some associations between the kinds of attitudes that we should cultivate toward our selves and those we should avoid at all costs, especially in this Advent season.  The categorizations that the Punnett Square allows might help to provide clarity for the difficult navigation we must make between the rocky shores of too much and too little.  Despite the risk of sounding Postmodernist, I will have to point out that humility, generally thought of as good, can very often be evil, just as pride, generally thought evil, has much power to influence good actions when it is properly exhibited.

Good Humility

Reality is good.  Humility acknowledges the reality of who and what we are, based on our identity as creatures and our actions as sinners.  The Catholic Encyclopedia defines humility as "a quality by which a person considering his own defects has a lowly opinion of himself and willingly submits himself to God and to others for God's sake."  The essential characteristic of the person of humility is the acknowledgement of the hierarchy of being stemming from God and flowing through the self.  The idea of submission to God requires that we put ourselves under God as the origin and the destination of our human lives.  True humility also encourages us to put others first in our relationships with them.  This attitude comes from an intimate awareness of our own failings and our responsibility for them and the way they influence others.  Good Humility shifts our expectations of others to expectations of our selves.

Evil Pride

Evil Pride is the obvious opposite of Good Humility.  I learned early in life (through such brilliant documentary films as this) the tendency for human beings to put themselves and their immediate interests before all other values.  This is the midpoint of Evil Pride where we behave without the reality check of the above mentioned hierarchy of being.  We are able to imagine that there is nothing above us, although, like the ceiling of the Great Hall at Hogwarts, this is just an illusion.  The starting point of Evil Pride is much more subtle.  An inflated view of the self can be manifested in many ways that we might not identify as such.  For myself, I know that when I begin to feel frustrated at something negative that has happened to me I have a tendency to dwell on thoughts of what I "deserve."  True or false, this kind of thinking makes the self the focus rather than others or God.  Taken to its extreme, Evil Pride makes us become our own beginning and end, essentially taking the place of God and severing our relationships with other people.

Good Pride

Pride is not always evil, however.  There are certain obvious examples of Good Pride that your football coach told you about, but Good Pride on a personal level has to meet certain requirements.  The first is that the source of Good Pride must be, at its most essential level, something outside the self.  The primary such source is, of course, God.  The things we like about our selves (and I would argue that we all have a moral obligation to like things about ourselves) must always be traceable in some way to the opportunities and resources given to us by others.  This factor is compatible with the idea that we must have an appropriate interest in the self.  Mr. Scrooge's business should have been the "common welfare," but his reaction to his conversion experience was not merely to start caring.  Still less did he spend his time bemoaning his past vices.  He went out and used his personal resources to practically aid those he knew to be hurting.  The joy of doing such things is what I call Good Pride, and it always motivates action.

Evil Humility

Good Pride is the cure for the evils associated with the poor practice of humility.  If there is a point that I would like this blog to make more emphatically than any other, it would have to be that Christians must resist  the impulse to take themselves out of the spiritual combat of the contemporary world through an attitude of self-deprecation that debilitates us.  If Good Humility acknowledges reality, Evil Humility forces us to apply unreasonable standards to ourselves.  In fact, when humility goes bad we really end up having an inordinate and even morbid interest in ourselves, and especially our flaws.  If Good Pride leads us to attend to others, Evil Humility leads us back into ourselves, ultimately debilitating us for any positive purpose we might otherwise accomplish.  If I may borrow a phrase from Uncle Screwtape:  this is a favored tool of the enemy. It is much easier for evil to thrive in the world when those who should be opposing it do not do so because they have made mistakes.  Nothing we have done in this life is as important as what we will do next.

Figure B

There is no "Figure B," but there perhaps should be.  Figure B would be a representation of the four categories that illustrates the fact that Good Humility and Good Pride are essentially the same attitude toward the self.  Evil Pride and Evil Humility are the two extremes that tend to distort what we find in this ideal center.  [Extended Metaphor Alert:  You have been warned] One of the toughest skills for me to master in ceramics class my senior year at Wabash was throwing a symmetrical pot on a wheel.  If you have ever tried this, you will know that the main job of the hands is to keep the clay balanced and centralized instead of bunching up and flying off in all directions.  If one side is allowed to slouch into a warped form, the other side is bound to go along with it.  The same is true of the shaping process in our own lives.  Good Humility and Good Pride are the hands that help to form us, while the Evil versions of the same are the temptations that cause us to fly apart. This Advent is a time for us to be shaped into centered vessels to hold the grace of the presence of Christ.

Advent, Actions and Identity

Those who know me well are probably aware (or could guess) that I have deep misgivings about the preparation given to teachers through undergraduate and graduate education classes. I watched my mother jumped through many hoops in her efforts to return to teaching later in life. From what I gathered of her commentary, the classes she was forced to take had little bearing on the realities of the classroom. Beyond that, they even seemed to represent a wisdom about the human person, and especially the child, that was just plain wrong. My wife Ally is now going through a similar process to earn her master's degree in teaching, and I must say that my confidence in our educational elites is at an all-time low. Please don't misunderstand me; my problem is not with the students/future teachers so much as it is with the instructors of these classes. One example of the disappointing nature of educational studies is the fact that in at least half, if not three quarters, of Ally's classes she has been taught and retaught APA style (this after having herself taught APA style to college students, but that is another story).

Another example comes from an online class session I happened to overhear the other night. The instructor made the comment that "negative encouragement has never motivated a child." In other words, children who do wrong will not be motivated to do right by you telling them that they have done wrong. The only thing that will motivate a child (and in this the instructor suggests children are exactly like dogs) is positive reinforcement. One example she presented was that when a child behaves in a disruptive manner two days in a row, the teacher is to praise the child for being slightly less disruptive on the second day.

I don't know what your reaction is to this, but here is mine:   HA!

The instructor made another observation that I found very compelling, however. She said that teachers should never praise the student personally, but only the student's actions. To illustrate: say "what you did was very good," not "you are good for doing that." Presumably the idea here is that what we want from students is a certain kind of behavior, and so we must focus our comments on behavior rather than identity.

You have heard the adage many times, I am sure: "love the sinner; hate the sin." This makes complete sense to me in that human beings and their actions are separable. If every person is a sinner, that does not mean we would also say that every person is, in an ultimate sense, evil. Is the same true with regard to goodness? I am actually inclined to agree. Just because we do good things, we are not able to therefore say that we are ultimately good. Human beings don't work that way. In this life we always have the possibility of turning away from evil and toward good, and vice versa.

On the other hand, orthodox Christian teaching informs us that "it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment." We have many, many chances within this one chance which is life. Eventually life will end and it will be up to God to decide how to judge our use of these sub-chances.

I honestly do not know whether I think the education instructor's advice would be successful in the classroom. I would say that it is good for each of us to remember that our actions and choices in this life are what will ultimately define us. Times in the calendar such as Advent are given to us by the Church to help remind us of our responsibility to define ourselves in accordance with the will of God. As we wait and prepare for the Christ child to be born, let us strive to do so with a more accurate view of who and what we are by having a more accurate view of exactly what we are choosing to do. Let us at least behave as if our actions are what define us as either good or evil, and we will be living out the gift of humility.