Pope Francis and the Anti-Hero Heroes of Today

 

Pope Francis’ citing Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton in his speech to Congress was a red flag to the Katholic Krazies.  Both Day and Merton, though they really represent the Church before Vatican II in as that the greater part of their work was done in the years prior to the Council, are icons of Contemporary Catholicism.     

The Pope cited Thomas Merton for his openness to dialogue and the reconciliation to which dialogue can lead.  Merton (1915-1968) was a convert to Catholicism while in graduate school at Columbia University and he later entered the Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemane in Kentucky.  Merton’s literary background put him in a unique position in the Abbey as he was commissioned to write several books introducing the Cistercian tradition to the American public.  Merton was also cast into a vital role in the Abbey as Master of Novices which mean that it was his task to oversee the instruction of the young monks in the first six or so years of their monastic journey.  During this time he immersed himself in the monastic tradition going back before Benedict to Cassian and the Desert Fathers.  As he explored the world of mysticism he began to notice similarities between the ancient traditions of the Desert Fathers with spiritualties in other religious traditions, most notably Zen Buddhism. In the last few years of his life, Merton began writing on this subject but while his exposure to Zen (in particular) and other Eastern traditions enriched his spiritual growth he remained orthodox in his Catholic faith and a priest in good standing. 

Merton’s contemplative journey has had a huge impact on many people over the years.  Despite the monastic setting in which he lived, tens or even hundreds, of thousands of Catholics and other Christians have learned from him how to practice a much deeper life of prayer that was typical of the Catholic laity (or even most Religious) in the those golden days of yore to which the neo-trads always harken as an alleged “golden age” of the faith.  Meditation has become a common practice among Catholic laity and Merton’s practical guides to a contemplative life have channeled out from his Cistercian cloister through the Benedictines, Carmelites, Augustinians and other apostolic communities to the laity.  Indeed through the influence of Merton, it is often more likely to find a deep spiritual life lived by laity than by many Religious or priests and this is a most unfortunate situation.  Fellow Cistercian Thomas Keating and Franciscan friar Richard Rohr have done much to advance Merton’s work in providing down to earth spiritual guidance rooted in the monastic heritage but suited to people “in the real world.” 

Merton did have a final crisis in his life that was very significant.  During a hospitalization two years before he died, he fell in love with a student Nurse.  The relationship is complex and it is uncertain whether or not and to what extent Merton was faithful to his vows.  In the end, however, he did recommit himself to the monastic life though, despite the admonition of his abbot, he never broke contact with the nurse.  Merton had also fathered an illegitimate child in his youth before his conversion.  Merton devotees seem to be able to take his faults in their stride; those who see Merton as negative influence stress his failings. 

What has set the krazies off about Merton is his commitment to dialogue and his conviction that dialogue with those who differ from us can enrich our own understanding of the Truth.  To those who have an absolutist view of the universe this is a very threatening concept.  They believe there since we possess all Truth in itself we can learn nothing—ours is but to impart the truth to others which is not dialogic but didactic.  Dialogue can lead to change and change is threatening to them. 

Merton’s exploration of mysticism also gave him a passion for social justice.  His was an early voice both for Civil Rights and against the War in Vietnam.  Merton understood that a contemplative life changes us, makes us see the world through God’s eyes, and recognize the fundamental evil of human-caused suffering whether it be poverty, war, discrimination, prejudice, sexism, religious hatred or other source of evil.  But it was Dorothy Day that Pope Francis cited as his model for the Church’s engagement with contemporary social issues.

Day’s life was as complex as Merton’s.  Like Merton, Day was a convert to the Church after a fairly raucous and even libertine life.  While she had always been a nominal Christian and even, for a while, a devout Episcopalian, her twenties were caught up in a somewhat bohemian existence.  She became pregnant by one love and terminated the pregnancy with an abortion.  She became—to her surprise (she had thought she was sterile after her abortion)—pregnant by a second lover and bore the child.  Motherhood changed her radically and her concern for her daughter made Day bring her life more sharply into focus.  Her politics had always been radical.  From the beginning her views were shaped by a Christian perspective on distributive justice, but in her relative naïveté this led to strong ties to the American Communist party.  She also was involved in Women’s Suffrage and had been arrested at the White House during the Wilson Administration for demonstrating for the right of women to vote.  Upon her conversion to Catholicism she moved away from Communism to the principles of Distributive Justice as were being articulated at the time by Pius XI as an alternative to both Marxism and uncontrolled market capitalism.  She came under the influence of Peter Maurin, a French immigrant well steeped in the Fathers of the Church and Catholic Theology who articulated a clear vision for what Catholics hold to constitute a just society.  Distributive justice of course demands an equitable distribution of wealth and this appears to many—both then and today—as socialism.  Day was no arm-chair radical but a very hands on practioner.  She and Maurin founded the Catholic Worker movement and began publishing its newspaper, The Catholic Worker.  The movement continues today, with the Church’s blessing, but on the extreme left of contemporary Catholicism.  Day herself has been proposed for the canonization process and has been given the title “Servant of God” in recognition of that status.  She died in 1980.

Dorothy Day, like Merton, is a threatening figure to the krazies because she isn’t a cookie-cutter Catholic.  Their being cited by the Pope as examples of American (and in this case Catholic) virtues signals a real re-ordering in our moral hierarchy.  No longer is righteousness limited to the field of sexual propriety but deeper values are permitted to transcend the superficial categories which we cathari, perfecti, pure ones, self-righteous have constructed to demonstrate our moral superiority.  This Pope is turning things upside down and if you don’t have a strong sense of adventure the ride is becoming frightening.  

Of Buddha and the Gospel

The Abbey of Our Lady of

Gethsemane, site of the first

Catholic Buddhist Dialogues

The death of actor/comedian Robin Williams has dominated the news yesterday and today and Hollywood has certainly lost a brilliant artist, but I have to admit that while I admired his incredible range of talent, I was not a fan.  About ten years ago I was with friends when we saw him in a three hour stand-up marathon.  I remember sitting there, roaring with laughter for the first hour until I suddenly realized that his humor was anything but funny.   It was not a good hearted poking fun at our private and social inconsistences but rather rooted in a pool of tremendous and intolerant rage that was striking out against people who saw things differently from him, including religion and especially the Catholic Church.  Now I have no problem with pointing out institutional flaws—including that of the Church—and, in fact, I think humor can be an excellent forum of the precise sort of constructive criticism that keeps us all honest.  What disturbs me is anger—and rage in particular—because anger moves us from rational beings to the sort of hateful firebrands that divide and pit us against one another.  Our mission as Christians is to bring creation together into one in Christ; division undermines this mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.    
In the years after the Second Vatican Council, the Holy See (much to the annoyance of the Katholic Krazies) opened up official dialogue not only with other Christian denominations, but with the other great World Religions.  The Catholic Buddhist Dialogue was entrusted to a panel of Catholic Monks and Nuns—mostly from the Benedictine and Cistercian traditions—who meet with a corresponding group of Buddhist monastics.  Their first meeting was in 1996 at the Cistercian (Trappist) Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemane in Kentucky, once home to the famous spiritual writer, Thomas Merton, who through his books and lectures introduced many Catholics, including myself, to Buddhist thought as a sort of lens through which Christians can bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ into sharper focus. 
The status of Buddhism as a religion is somewhat questionable.  Buddhism is non-theistic in as that it does not posit the existence of a God.  Neither does it deny the existence of God; the question of God is simply not considered in Buddhist thought.  It might be better described as a philosophy and in particular as a “philosophy of life” as its primary focus is the concern for attaining human happiness.  Much like the tradition of our Catholic mystics, and especially Saint John of the Cross, Buddhism teaches that desire for things—wealth, possessions, relationships, to love and be loved, power, prestige—is the source of all unhappiness.  True happiness is found in no-thing.  As I said, this echoes the insights of Christian mysticism, and indeed, echoes the teachings of Jesus that in order to attain eternal happiness one must leave behind mother and father, spouse and children, houses and wealth—whoever loves these things more than me (Jesus) is not worthy of me.  (Matt 10: 37ff)
Now I want to make it perfectly clear that, while I have always found Buddhist thought to enrich my own spiritual journey, I find Christianity to be greatly richer in what it offers than Buddhism.  Buddhism focuses on the avoidance of suffering whereas Christianity teaches us to embrace suffering—and particularly to embrace the suffering of the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters—and to reach out to alleviate their suffering.  (Buddhism, in its doctrine of compassion also teaches that we should alleviate the suffering of others, but alleviating the suffering of others is subordinate to the avoidance of one’s own suffering, or can be seen as the fruit of having attained a state where one is now beyond the power of suffering because one has attained that freedom from desire, whereas Christianity more encourages us to pro-active in addressing the pain of others.)    I think this explains why Christians have always been somewhat more pro-active in both in building hospitals, schools, orphanages and other charitable institutions as well as working for societal reform to eliminate the root causes of poverty, disease and other conditions that afflict humankind.  That being said, I still think there is much we—Christians, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, secular humanists—can learn from the Buddhist tradition. And one of those things is addressing anger.  
In that first encounter of Catholic and Buddhist representatives at Gethsemane Abbey eighteen years ago, Buddhist scholar Pandith Vajiragnana said:
There is no way in Buddhism that we accept anger as a good thing. Under no circumstance is it accepted as a good thing. Besides anger, at the root of our mind is also selfish love or attachment.
Anger is a tremendous force for evil and despite all our western talk of “righteous anger” or justified anger, I sincerely doubt that anger qua anger can be used to produce any good results.  While a certain measure of social change may be attributed to the anger triggered as a reaction to racism or other injustices, I wonder how lasting change founded in anger can be.  It seems only to give rise to the anger of opposing forces.  The increasing polarization of our society and the rise of such anger-drive  movements as the “Tea Party” with their rabid opposition to immigration reform, their intense personal hatred of President Obama, their fascination with guns and violence, their intransigent refusal for political dialogue and collaboration that keeps bringing our government to standstills is, I believe, a reaction to the social “progress” that has been achieved by anger-drive movements on the left that worked for needed social change but did so from a position of outrage and anger rather than from a deep conviction of building a more open and just society.  I am of an age where I can remember the anger of the riots in 1968, the anger of Stonewall and the anger of burning flags and burning draft-cards.   Pictures of aborted fetuses and pictures of bloody-coat-hangers represent the irrational anger on each side of the abortion debate.   I remember standing at a rally at the US Capitol and hearing Knights of Columbus denounce Cardinal Bernadin in the most angry and derogatory of terms for his call for “Common Ground” and dialogue with those with whom we disagree.  And I think one of the greatest crimes in our history was how J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI disguised the non-violence of Dr. Martin Luther King and had him portrayed in the media not for the apostle of non-violence he was but as a communist trying to bring our country to revolution.  
We are a society consumed by anger.  How much of our entertainment is anger-driven whether by video games or television or movies or contemporary “music?”  Our societal fascination with guns and the artificial “need” it has created for semi-automatic and automatic weapons is only one more expression of how anger is poisoning our society.   We have countless instances of road-rage, domestic violence, sexual abuse—all anger driven. 
 We cannot deny that anger is in  our makeup.  At that same 1996 meeting at Gethsemane Pandith Vajiragnana said:
People have different temperaments, and one of those temperaments is informed by anger.  Anger is in us all, so we need to recognize it, then, what to do?  The Buddha very clearly said that anger cannot be appeased by anger.  It is to be appeased by love.  So, we must practice love.
So said the Buddha.  So also said Jesus.  As his disciples we must learn to tame our anger as we must tame the other vices that original sin has woven into our character.  We can’t deny our anger—it is most dangerous when we claim it has no power over us.  We must tame it by cultivating the virtue of compassion whereby we try to come to a patient comprehension of the forces that drive those who are different from us, who think differently, who hold different values.  We must not, as Pope Francis likes to remind us, judge others but seek to understand them.  This does not mean that we will let go of our own values and commitments, but rather that we try to bring them into some sort of dialogue.
Mental Health Professionals claim that one of the roots of depression is anger that is not well managed.   Anger, when not given proper outlet, can overwhelm the psyche and turn into depression.  This is perhaps the root of the tragedy that overwhelmed Robin Williams.  It is a great loss.  We need to wake up to the perils of anger and learn to convert our anger into compassion. 

The Eucharist: Where the East Meets West

Kennedy Roshi ordains

Trappist monk Kevin

Hunt as a Zen sensei

or teacher

Kennedy Roshi is a Zen Master in the White Plum Asanga lineage who teaches and guides students in Zen meditation.  As his name indicates he is not Asian by background, but American.  Moreover he is a Jesuit and an ordained Catholic priest in good standing with the Church.  He was sent for studies in Japan where he was ordained to the priesthood of the Catholic Church in 1965.  After ordination he studied Zen with Yamada Koun, a distinguished  Japanese Zen Master to whom many Christians came to learn meditation.  Among other Dharma heirs (students whose fidelity to the tradition passed on by the Master) of Yamada Koun was not only Kennedy Roshi but several Catholic Religious—Jesuits, Benedictine monks and Benedictine nuns.  As a Roshi Kennedy himself has the authority to pass on authentic Zen tradition and has ordained several disciples including Kevin Hunt Sensei, a monk of Saint Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer MA.   How can one be a Catholic and a Buddhist?  It is not as rare as one might think.     
      Several years ago I was hiking in Tuscany and struck up a conversation with some English Buddhists who were staying at the same small hotel.  They were there on a wine tour.  Buddhists on a wine tour is somewhat like monks on a brothel crawl.  Buddhists abstain from alcoholic beverages as a matter of ascetic discipline.  Buddhists, at least practitioners of Buddhism, are vegetarian and these jolly Englanders were downing cinghiali, prosciutto, lardo, pancetta, sausages of every description, and whatever other pieces of pork, wild or tame, they could get their hands on like the Taliban was coming to eliminate pigs from the face of the earth.  These “Buddhists” were dilettantes whose “sangha” was more a social club and where the “dharma” was no more than an Asian take on “Prosperity Gospel” religion.  It was to Buddhism what Joel Osteen or Norman Vincent Peale are to Christianity—the Happy Clappy “power of positive thinking” hogwash. 
       Real Buddhism involves discipline.  The Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha are taken seriously.  But real Buddhism argumentably isn’t a religion, not in the western sense.  Buddhism doesn’t posit the existence of a Deity.  I wouldn’t say that it is atheistic in the sense that it denies God; it is just non-theistic.  I think it is more precise to say that Buddhism is, what we in the west would call, a philosophy.  Now I am saying this as a non-Buddhist and I am open to correction, or at least conversation,  on this point—from an acknowledged Buddhist.  I have read extensively in Buddhism for forty years and have a good collection of Buddhist works on my shelves.  I am not an authority by any means, but let me explain what I mean.  And when I say that it is not a religion, in the western sense, I do not intend that to denigrate Buddhism in any way.  But Buddhism differs greatly in the questions it ponders from the question that Christian, Jewish, or Islamic thought—or western atheistic thought—raises.    Or perhaps I had better further refine that: Buddhism differs greatly in the questions it ponders than does Christian, Jewish, or Islamic thought, excepting the mystical strains of those religions.  The bridge of commonality between Buddhism and Christianity  is pretty much limited to the mystical tradition within Christianity.   That is why the official Catholic/Buddhist dialogue is conducted by a panel of Christian and Buddhist monastics.   The various meetings of Catholic and Buddhist monastic scholars which have taken place at the Trappist Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemane in Kentucky in 1996, 2002, and 2008 have been very productive for both sides as the rich heritage of contemplation in both religions has been shared.
        Granted in some forms of Buddhism, and I think in particular of Tibetan Buddhism, there is mention of various “gods” or “demons” but these do not correspond to what is meant by a deity or god in western thought.  Anthropologically they seem to be survivals from pre-Buddhist animism and are some sort of “spirits.”  They are not common to all forms of Buddhism and these micro-gods would be foreign to most Buddhists, particularly those in the Zen tradition.  Even in Tibetan Buddhism they comprise an element more of popular religion than official doctrine. 
       I have always been struck by how most Buddhists, including and perhaps especially the Dalai Lama, have spoken of the western concept of God.  The Asian mind is not binary as is the western mind.  To the west, if A is true then B must be false.  We use scientific medicine or traditional forms of medical practice—herbs, acupuncture, etc.  One is a scientist or a mystic, a Democrat or a Republican, a believer or an agnostic.  In the East this duality seems strange and the Eastern mind is given to living with paradox and contradiction.   In Japan it is not uncommon for a person to be Buddhist and Shinto; in China Confucian and Buddhist. 
      While Buddhism does not posit the existence of a Supreme Being, Buddhist leaders and Philosophers speak comfortably of God and of Jesus without seeming to find a contradiction to their convictions.  In his book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh, perhaps, after the Dalai Lama,  the best known Buddhist author in the West, tells of receiving Holy Communion at a Mass celebrated by Daniel Berrigan.  (OK, I know that isn’t kosher, um, I mean canonically approved, but it happened and Berrigan is a Jesuit so what does one expect.)  The Buddhist Master gives a remarkably clear and vivid statement about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist that not only reveals his experience of the Risen Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar but chides those Christians for whom an encounter with the Eucharistic Christ has become so routine as to be no longer truly appreciated.  Western minds have a difficult time wrapping around this ability to reconcile diverse understandings within a single mind and heart but perhaps the problem is not with the Eastern ability to live with Paradox but the Western inability to accept the complexity of Truth.  
        So can one be a Buddhist and a Catholic?  Does being a Buddhist preclude one from being a Catholic?  Well, it depends on what one means by “being a Buddhist.”  It is not necessary to leave the Catholic Church or renounce its doctrines to practice Buddhism’s spiritual path.  When one uses the traditional Catholic distinction between latria (the adoration given to God alone) and dulia, the veneration given to saints or holy persons, one can say that there is no worship (latria)  given in Buddhism to the Buddha or other figures but only the veneration due to wise and noble figures.   
        When the Reverend Marcel Guarnizo refused Barbara Johnson Holy Communion at her mother’s funeral Mass, he did so because she is in a same-sex relationship.   He was unaware that she is a “Buddhist.”  That fact was unearthed by Guarnizo’s supporters only after the fact but it has been used as a secondary justification for the priest’s action.  Of course since he did not know it at the time and therefore it played no part in his decision, it can’t be used to justify it.  On the other hand, should her being a Buddhist have been reason for Ms. Johnson not to have come forward to Communion?  Well it depends.  What sort of Buddhist is Ms. Johnson?  Is she, like those English vinophiles I mentioned a dilettante, a sort of religious tourist to Buddhism, who plays at it weekends?  If she does not follow the disciplines, to some degree, of Buddhism she is not really a Buddhist.    Though even if she practices Buddhism seriously that does not mean she is still a Catholic either.  Has she officially renounced Catholicism through some formal act?  The Church says you don’t just sort of cease being a Catholic.  You have to either formally join some other religious community incompatible with one’s Catholicism or formally reject, not Church teaching, but your membership in the Church.  (I know of a case where a priest required a person who said they no longer were a Catholic to sign a document to that effect and have it notarized before the priest would hire the man as a non-Catholic employee.)   Apparently from the example of Kennedy Roshi and other Catholic clergy, religious, and practicing laity on can practice Buddhist spiritual disciplines and still be a Catholic.  Since Ms. Johnson claims to attend Mass (and receive Holy Communion) at least from time to time, she does not consider herself to have left the Church whatever her involvement with Buddhism may be.         

Celibacy--Today's Situation

The Changing Face of the
Priesthood by Father Donald
Cozzens--certainly worth the

read

Professor Daniel Maguire of Marquette University wrote today in the New York Times “Letters” that   “The root of the problem (clerical sex abuse) is mandatory celibacy. There is a reason religions with a married clergy have no comparable problem — not that they are problem-free. Celibacy is not a bona fide occupational qualification for ministry.” I am a bit surprised at this because Dr. Maguire is usually better nuanced in his observations.  In the first place his claim that religions (or at least other Christian Churches) with a married clergy have no comparable problem.  I am not sure what parallel universe that Professor Maguire lives in, or perhaps it is just the rarified air of his ivory tower—and theologians have the more rarified air of all academics, allowing angels to have danced on the heads of pins for centuries—but he needs to talk with any Episcopalian or Lutheran Bishop or meet with the officials of any presbytery in the country to know that the problem of clerical sex abuse is not unique to celibate clergy.  On the other hand, he may want to visit a few Buddhist temples and inquire why their celibate monks (seem, at least to) stay out of the limelight in this disheartening problem.  Don’t misunderstand me, I am not defending mandatory celibacy. To the contrary:  I think it is sick.  Not  because it has to do with sex, but because—and here is where Maguire is on to something though he misdiagnosed it—celibacy and sex abuse (whether of minors or vulnerable adults) does have a common root.  Power. 

      The most common motivational issue behind sexual abuse is the need of one person to dominate another who is in a position of inferior power.  An adult incapable of healthy peer relationships seeks to control or otherwise dominate a person whose youth and naiveté leaves him (or her) vulnerable.  An employer or a person higher up the power chain in a corporation or an institution (for example the United States Military) has a need to flex power by exercising control over a subordinate, and what control is more total than demanding sexual favors.  Even in what might appear—and the operative word is appear—to be a healthy peer relationship, one person often has a need to dominate the other. 

      Celibacy too is about power and the need to dominate.  In 2000 Father Donald Cozzens of the Cleveland diocese published a book that “hit the nail on the head,” The Changing Face of the Priesthood.  This is one of the most insightful, indeed I think it is the single most insightful, analysis of the issues facing the Catholic Church in North America.  It deals with far more than celibacy or the sex-abuse crisis.  I think it is particularly insightful on reasons for the vocation crisis in the Church today and why parents, unlike fifty years ago, do not want their children to be priests or nuns.  It deals with how the abuse of power is structuralized in the Catholic Church. 

     In the last several posts, I have shown that celibacy historically was used to protect Church property against alienation to the families of priests in the medieval period.  That is not an issue today. Today I would suggest that celibacy is a key factor in creating a psychological dependency of the clergy on the hierarchy.  The priest is never allowed to achieve a full social maturity.  He is required to live in Church-owned housing.  With housing provided, he is paid a less than professional salary—enough to live on but not enough to give him any independence.  While some priests are able to supplement this dependency-income with family money or are canny enough to successfully transform their resources into something of a fortune sufficient to let them buy a home and have an income sufficient for independence, most clergy remain for their entire lives dependent on their diocese or religious community for housing, meals, automobile, and an income just sufficient for clothing and relatively modest vacations.  Such dependency creates a relationship with the Institutional Church and its representatives not unlike that of the abuse victim afraid to break the ties with his abuser.  Where can he go?  What choices does he have?  He comes to see himself as powerless over his life and life choices.  Who will have him if the abuser (or in this case, the Institution) turns him out?  The abuser (or the Institution) is someone that everyone esteems.  While he, the abused (or the priest) finds himself unhappy with the situation, it must be him and not the situation since the abuser (Institution) is so highly respected that they can do nothing wrong.  Or perhaps the victim (the priest) feels “honored” to be the recipient of the reflected glory and power of the abuser (Institution).  And there are rewards.  Just as an abuser might take his victim for a nice vacation, buy him or her some clothes, even a car, or give him access to money or a career.  So too the priest has the hopes of being sent on for higher studies, given a better parish, maybe even being made a monsignor, or—dare he think it?—a bishop! 

      This is not to say that that there are not good priests, sincere priests,—there are, hundreds, even thousands.   There are many men who have found an interior freedom that lets them function effectively in a dysfunctional institution.  They give generous service to others and have found strategies to maintain their own emotional and spiritual health despite the unhealthiness of the system in which they work.  On the other hand, many good priests have come to realize just how dysfunctional the system is and for their own welfare have chosen to find other vocational paths.  And, tragically, the Church has more than a significant share of men who have drunk the clerical Kool-Aid and live not in the freedom of the Gospel but in enthrallment to an Institution that is in dire need of Reform.  More on this in the next posting.