The Prophetic Mission of the Religious Sisters

this doesn't quite speak to me, or if it does,

I don't think the message is orthodox and

it should be looked into by the Congregation

for the Doctrine of the Faith

I was preparing a lecture on monasticism this past weekend and I came upon this quote from Thomas Merton

Special Emphasis is put on the mystique of martyrdom—the consummation of the Christian’s consecration of himself to Christ in baptism   Tertulian writes: “A prison provides a Christian with the same advantages that a desert gives to a prophet.”  This is interesting,  Not only are the Desert Fathers heirs to the vocation of the martyrs, but the martyrs are heirs of those pre-desert Fathers, the prophets   

  Thomas Merton, Cassian and the Fathers: Initiation into the Monastic Tradtion, edited by Patrick F. O’Connell, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo  2005.  p. 11.

OK, this I recognize

seems to me to be what

our faith is about.

Merton demonstrates, citing Tertullian, a connection here between monasticism (and by extension, religious life) and prophetic charism.  Monasticism had its origins, in part, in the desire of men and women to give their lives totally to God in the age where the option of martyrdom was fast closing because the persecution of the Roman Empire was drawing to a close.  The word “martyr” comes from the Greek μάρτυς, a witness.  Prophet comes from the Greek προφήτης—which means someone who speaks up on behalf of, testifies for, another.  Tertullian makes a link between prophets and martyrs.  That link passed to the desert monks.  Men and women whose passion of faith led them to want to surrender their lives totally to God, turned to the ascetical life in the desert as hermits or monks.  Origen draws the connections between the martyrs and the desert ascetics when he interprets the parable of the sower and the seed (Matthew 13:1-23).  Origen says that those who bear increase a hundred fold are the martyrs.  Those who bear increase sixty-fold are the ascetics (those men and women who have opted for lives of celibacy and prayer), and those who bear witnesses thirty-fold are the widows—who give themselves to prayer and good works. 

     The monastic life began as a witness by those committed Christians who understood that the society around them with all its distractions and pleasures was no place for the heart that seeks God and his kingdom.   They desired a purity of heart that would empower them to focus on God and God alone.  Their function within the larger Church was to witness, to keep alive the testimony, that God demands our all.   It was not, as it was with the gnostics, a rejection of the world as evil, but rather a witness to the Christian that there is a Reality beyond this world and that our hearts, whatever our particular vocation is, must be set on that reality. The witness was a powerful one and this prophetic role within the community highly values, so much so that by the fifth century and afterwards, bishops were increasingly chosen from among the monks.  And the preaching of those monk bishops is remarkable.  Many of those readings from Chrysostom, Augustine, Jerome (who was not a bishop but very prominent, none the less), and other “Fathers” of the Church are still read today in the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours.  The monks, despite their withdrawal from society, were keenly aware of the concrete demands of the Gospel in the world.  They understood the fundamental connection between the Eucharist and an advocacy for the poor,  they realized the responsibilities that came with financial prosperity.  They understood that true religion demanded a distributive justice—that true faith demanded good stewardship of one’s material goods.  One of these Fathers, Saint Basil wrote:

The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the person who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the person who has none; the money which you hoard in the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help, but fail to help."     

Chrysostom wrote

Do you wish to honour the body of Christ? Do not ignore him when he is naked. Do not pay him homage in the temple clad in silk, only then to neglect him outside where he is cold and ill-clad. He who said: "This is my body" is the same who said: "You saw me hungry and you gave me no food", and "Whatever you did to the least of my brothers you did also to me"... What good is it if the  Eucharistic table is overloaded with golden chalices when your brother is dying of hunger?  Start by satisfying his hunger nd then with what is left you may adorn the altar as well

     And there are people today in the Church that think that the Sisters are too involved in social justice? 
        Over a period of time, and especially with the Rule of Saint Benedict, monasticism became more formalized and new forms of religious life emerged—Canons Regular in the 11^th and 12^th centuries, mendicant friars in the 13^th,  The  Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life in the 15^th, the Apostolic Congregations such as the Society of Jesus, the Theatines, the Vincentians in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  Similarly monastic institutions of women evolved as women affiliated themselves to the canons regular, the mendicants, and apostolic congregations. Charismatic women such as Mary Ward and Angela Merici established autonomous women’s communities not affiliated to men’s communities and with—for the time—the radical vision of educating women.  Vincent de Paul made a radical leap with his daughters of Charity who were very untraditional.  He instructed them
…for a monastery, only the houses of the sick, for cell, a rented room, for chapel, the parish church, for cloister, the streets of the city, for enclosure, obedience, for grill, the fear of God, for veil, holy modesty.  

Perhaps among all the congregations of religious, the Daughters of Charity have been the most prophetic because of the heroic service they have given to the poor. 

      It is the role of religious in the Church to be prophetic—to speak up against the institutionalism, whether in the worlds of business, government, society, or even the world of the Church, that is contrary to the Gospel.  To do this authentically, religious need to reexamine the monastic roots which may not lay at the foundation of their particular institute but which do comprise the underpinning of religious life itself.  Religious must be contemplatives.  That does not mean they must be cloistered but it does mean that their hearts have to be set on God and on his Word. They must strive for that singular focus of the Kingdom of God. 
         And this is the irony of the present moment.  When Cardinal Burke parades around in his nine yards of scarlet silk topped by a fur wrap it is not God’s Kingdom that is being witnessed to.  When Cardinal Law, fleeing accountability in Boston for his role in cover-ups of criminal activity, enjoys the luxurious quarters that were his as Archpriest of Saint Mary Major, it is not God’s kingdom to which he was witnessing.  The rank and vicious ambition for which Archbishop Lori became known as aide-de-camp to the late Cardinal James Hickey of Washington is not witness to God’s Kingdom.  When Carl Anderson draws a million + a year from the Knights of Columbus while using Knights funds to accomplish political agendas both at home in the States and in the rats’ nest of the Roman Curia, it is not God’s kingdom he is witnessing to. 
         But the good Sisters.  I go to homeless shelters, soup kitchens, shelters for abused women and children, inner-city schools, day-care for the elderly, and I find the nuns, not the prelates.  Sadly, I don’t even find the priests, at least those with pontiff collars and silver cufflinks under their cassocks.  No, the religious are the prophetic voice—and that is their vocation.  There are those who want to silence that voice but the ladies have the credibility of living what they bear witness to.  Moreover it is their right, their responsibility, and their vocation to give witness. You go girls!

A Path for the Wise

That picture of Mother Delores Hart in my last post drew an above average number of readers.  People love good old traditional nuns—I love good old traditional nuns, but then I believe that the monastic life in its various expressions—traditional and modern—is very much a hope for both the Church and the world in which we live. 

        Sister Joan Chittester, a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie PA, is a great example of the contemporary monastic.  I have never met Sister Joan though we have exchanged letters on a few occasions and she was a friend of a dear cousin of mine who died several years ago.  I have read a number of her books and find that while sometimes her ideas are challenging she can speak right to me.  One of my favorites is The Fire In These Ashes (Sheed and Ward, 1995).  In The Fire In These Ashes, Sister Joan says that the raison d’etre for monastic life is “to find God.”  You don’t become a monk or a nun for any other purpose than to find God. 

      I have always been a bit jealous of those who are called to the monastic life because at the end of the day, what is there except the search to find God?  I am a busy person.  I teach.  I run a library.  I give talks, retreats, renewal programs.  I am on committees.  I advise students with their research and papers.  I see people for spiritual direction.  I do a lot of things—but to what end?  Is life about keeping busy?  Or “putting bread and butter on the table?” I am a historian.  Do I really care about the Battle of Agincourt?  Am I supposed to think there is something worth caring about in the economic bubble of the twelfth century? Why should I bother with the Pirenne Thesis?  The fact of the matter is that history intrigues me not because some event a thousand years ago happened—things happening today have more import—but  because men and women in every age run around like ants on an anthill trying to find something? The question is: What are they looking for?  God?  No, of course not. At least not consciously.  But they are looking for meaning, for purpose.  And different people find different purpose in life.  For some it is love.  For some money. For  some power. For some freedom.  For some Beauty.  And does any of it last?  At the end of the day, does any of it matter?  No.  And so most just keeping running around in their busy circles.  But for those who wake up from their manic quest and realize how transient life is, the search then continues for that which is eternal. We want to set our eyes on some beacon that shines consistently drawing us on and through the pains and the sorrows, the transient joys and passing hopes of today.   Back in the third century people who realized how empty an unfocused life can be began going out into the deserts of Syria and Egypt.  They left their business and their families and their ambitions—and their religion—to live as solitaries, haunted by the realization that there has to be something more than money in the bank, love in their bed, a fancy house in which to live, and even moving ceremonies on Sunday mornings.  Perhaps the most startling thing is that they realized that a nice ceremony on Sunday morning wasn’t answering the call of their heart.  Here they were looking for God and they saw the emptiness of ritual and rite—the failure of religion to capture and hold the Divine Mystery.  Saint Antony Abbot is a prime example: he left his home and his pharmacy shop in Alexandria and shut himself up in an abandoned fort for over twenty years—never coming out, even for Sunday Mass.  

       Now I am not against Mass.  Far from it, I attend daily.  But Antony Abbot realized that the practice of religion was not enough.  There is something more, something beyond even the most fervent practice of religion.  Eighty some years ago Simone Weil wrote an essay in which she clearly distinguished the Love of God from the Love of Religion.  (Simone Weil, Waiting For God, trans. By Emma Craufurd, New York: Harper & Row, 1973.)  Religion is Religion—it isn’t God.  The Church is the Church—it isn’t God.  Religion or the Church can be the path to God and while it might advance you along the way, it ultimately will fall short of the destination. And often Religion or the Church are misused as paths that only circle back upon themselves.  Even the Sacraments will ultimately fall short.  The Uncreated can never be encapsulated in the created, the Creator in the creature.  This is why monks and nuns—real monks and nuns—have an affinity for agnostics.  They know how elusive God is.  God is always one step beyond us.  We arrive at the place where God was only to find that God has slipped away leaving a trace, a scent, some intangible sign that only makes us more ardent in our pursuit.  And at the same time we are pursuing him, ever more ardently, we begin to suspect that he is, in fact, pursuing us—luring us on ever deeper into  Mysterium—mysterium tremendum et fascinans.  And it is this that drives men and women into monasteries.  

        Sometimes in history the monasteries have taken on lives of their own—lives that distract the monk or the nun with the needs of administration, of building a church, of organizing the work, of feeding and clothing a community, of raising the money to do it all.  At the same time the formal prayers can easily replace the inner eros that impels the monk or nun on.  The need to practice the chant or shine the candleholders can seduce the heart away from its hunt and the monk or nun can forget the vision of their earnest years.  That is a tragic pitfall one hopes they can avoid. It is not unique to Christian monasticism—read the Dalai Lama and he will tell you the same about monks in his tradition who become lost in the superficial details and observances of their lives.   But monastic life is no place for religious people.  It is certainly no place for the pious.  Monastic life isn’t about the habit or the incense or even the chant.  All that is just icing on the cake—maybe even a seduction away from the heart of the life which is simply to seek God in his nakedness and in ours.

       And this is why we need to hear more of the monastic voices in the Church.  They have a wisdom that speaks beyond the superciliousness of the pious and directly to the dark night of the seeker.   As Elizabeth Barret Brownking wrote 

      Earth’s crammed with heaven

      And every common bush aflame with God

      And only he who sees takes off his shoes

      The rest sit round it

      And pluck blackberries

A lot of people are plucking blackberries—we need people in the Church today who can point and shout: “Fire!” For what a fire it is for those with eyes to see. 

History in the Making: The Sex-Abuse Crisis--Let's Stop Telling Lies

The John Jay College of Criminal Justice released its report on the underlying causes of the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church this past week.  The study was commissioned (and in great part paid for) by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.  It was a good idea to look for the roots of the problem and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice is an unimpeachable judge to the issue.  Nevertheless something went peculiarly wrong. 

The report found guilty the permissive atmosphere of the ‘6o’s and ’70’s.  Innocent of causing the immense harm done to thousands are mandatory celibacy, an all male priesthood, and homosexuality,

A study is only as good as how its purpose and limitations are defined and this study was skewed in that such controversial issues of Catholic doctrine and discipline (celibacy and all male priesthood) would not be called into question.

I am the first to agree that the issue is not celibacy.  Nor is it an all male priesthood.  I suspect that it is not even homosexuality—per se.  That is the root of the problem is not celibacy per se nor an all male priesthood, per se; nor homosexuality, per se. But in fact it may only be homosexuality—per se—that isn’t part of the foundational problem. 

Celibacy, when freely chosen by a psycho-sexually mature individual, is a noble adornment to the Church.  The man or woman who is capable of healthy intimacy but who renounces the rewards and compensations (and trials and heartache) of marriage and family to devote his or herself to the work of the Gospel is a witness to the compelling nature of the call to preach the Kingdom of God. 

The problem is that mandatory celibacy has proven to be a refuge for countless men (and some women) whose psycho-sexual maturity is at best questionable.  Individuals who are uncertain of their sexual identity or who are not comfortable with sexual identity or sexual appetites and feelings can be drawn to priesthood or religious life as an escape from having to confront the uncomfortable and challenging aspects of their own personalities. Let me give some examples.

In my workshops and teaching I have a fair amount of contact with enclosed (cloistered) nuns and been surprised how (proportionately) many have been victims of sexual abuse—primarily by family members or close friends of their families.  Withdrawal into the cloister has represented to them safety.  Now, when I say “how many,” compared to the numbers of women in society who have been victims of sexual abuse (some estimates are as high as 1 in 5) it is nowhere near that high. That “high” represents a cross-section of total mid and late -20^th century American society.  The picture changes when you look at the section of society from which these nuns come—that is to say European descent, white or blue collar, middle and upper-middle class, Catholic families and with high-school or college diploma.  Sexual abuse, especially abuse by a family member, knows no social, educational, racial, or economic boundaries, yet neither is it distributed equally throughout society.  I have no scientific evidence or even formal research on this issue, it is only an impression, but an impression built up over thirty years and stronger with each encounter. 

Let me also say that for many women who have been exploited in their youth, contemplative life within a sympathetic community of women, some of whom have shared the burden of having been abused, has been very therapeutic and many women have come to a health and maturity in their self-identity.  It is an example of where grace builds on nature.   

I wish I could say the same for men.  Here I think we need to break them into sub-groups which have certain features in common with one another and distinct to each group.  I would speak first of the monastic and semi-monastic communities, secondly of the apostolic communities, and thirdly of diocesan priests and societies of secular priests.

With women, or at least enclosed women, the issue that drew those with psycho-sexual issues has usually been instance of abuse in their pre-convent years, generally adolescent and post-adolescent.  With men, celibacy seems to draw to religious life or priesthood those whose issue is  avoiding dealing with sexual identity, most notably those who are confused about their being heterosexual or homosexual or those who sense themselves to be homosexual and are trying to avoid the implications of that awareness or to render it neutralized by adopting a celibate lifestyle.  This is not to say that same-sex attraction is not an issue among religious women, sisters (as distinct from enclosed nuns) in particular, but it doesn’t seem to be as strong an issues as it is among priests and religious men. 

In regard to those who are confused about whether they are (predominately) heterosexual or homosexual, a life of public celibacy permits them to avoid the issue.  They (think that they) don’t need to know the answer to the question that troubles them within.  Instead of being one or the other, they will choose a lifestyle that permits them—indeed seems to mandate them—to be neither. This is probably why the numbers of gay priests is so hard to pin down.  In addition to men who have come to terms with their same-sex attraction, and to those who are genuinely heterosexual, you have a considerable number of homosexual priests who are either trying desperately to convince themselves and others that they are “straight,” or in denial of any sexual identity at all.  Any estimates on the percentage of priests who are gay versus those who are “straight” must be based on criterion other than how the priests themselves identify themselves. 

In monastic or semi-monastic life this illusion of being-asexual gives way faster than it usually does in the apostolic communities or among diocesan or secular priests.  By monastic communities I mean those communities of men that are enclosed religious such as the Cistercians or some Benedictine groups.  By semi-monastic I mean monks from abbeys with apostolic ministries—parishes, schools, colleges.  Also semi-monastic should include those medieval mendicant communities with a more highly developed spirituality and intentional community life.  A deep interior life requires the individual to search every nook and cranny of the soul (psyche), shining the light of the Gospel (mental prayer) into every recess and coming to know oneself with as close an approximation to the Divine Knowledge of oneself as grace and honest prayer allow.  Moreover, a mature and secure community environment allows the individual the safety to raise the troubling questions and usually provides the fraternal support to face whatever truths emerge. 

It is often somewhat different in apostolic communities.  Some apostolic communities have as rich a spiritual tradition and practice as the most contemplative of monks.  I think particularly of the Society of Jesus.  Many however have more a sustaining piety than a genuine spirituality; or they have a spirituality but it is one that is meant to channel the energy outward into service of others without the rigorous solitude, the sort of pseudo-desert as it were, that will allow no stone to remain unturned in the search of self-knowledge.  In these communities it is possible for those who wish, and most of us wish to avoid hard work and to flee the unpleasant questions, to avoid dealing with the issues of psycho-sexual identity that drew us to lives of celibacy in the first place.  And then if “community” is not so much a network of relationships but more a catering and laundry service that frees more time for ministry, the individual often will not have developed the trust skills to let him allow others to accompany and share the burdens of self-knowledge. 

And then we have the secular priests, whether those who belong to some sort of society of non-vowed priests (Opus Dei, Oratorians, various missionary societies) or who are priests of an individual diocese. I have been very distressed to see how few secular and diocesan priests have a genuine spirituality.  They usually have a corporate piety—a set of exterior practices which regulate their relationship to God—but not a genuine spirituality that brings them into a profound and humbling encounter with God.  Their prayer is primarily that set of external practices: mass, the office, the rosary, “visits” to the Blessed Sacrament—all of which is done with devotion—but which doesn’t rise from within and bring to the surface with it all the spiritual angst of truthful self-assessment.    

Two key words in differentiating spirituality from piety are “interior” and “humbling.”  Genuine spirituality—and again I am a historian and am speaking from the writings of the mystics—shifts the balance of prayer from external practice to interior silence, indeed almost to the point of inactivity.  “Almost” is important as we don’t want to mistake quietism for orthodox spirituality.  The liturgy and even some measure of devotional prayer persist but the individual finds his or her truest prayer to be in silent attention to the Divine Mystery unfolding within his or her heart.  Genuine spirituality not only moves the individual from the Mystery without to the Mystery within, but brings the individual into a frank self-awareness where in the Divine Image as it unfolds in his or her soul one sees one’s own self reflected for both who one is and who one is called to be.  Genuine spirituality leaves no choice but an interior journey of self-discovery and self-knowledge.  The issues of one’s sexual identity must be dealt with—there is not only no escaping the question, there is no escape from the answers.

Too often I have dealt with priests and religious who are in profound denial of their sexual identity.  They tell gay-bashing jokes and use vulgar terms that deride gay people, or they are legalistic, harsh and unsympathetic in the confessional while they themselves are running from their own same-sex attraction. The most dangerous sexual-predators come from these ranks.  With no one they trust enough to confide in, with no one with whom they are sufficiently intimate to share their journey of self-exploration, they are lone wolves and when they see vulnerable prey—they jump at the bait.  Incapable of sufficient trust for adult-adult relationships, they turn to the only relationships in which they are secure: relationships with the younger, the less mature and/or the vulnerable.  In the case of priests or male religious who are gay this leads to inappropriate relationships with young men or post pubescent boys; with those who are “straight,” with underage and/or vulnerable women.  Of course, in the case of genuine pedophiles—those attracted to pre-pubescent children—we are dealing with a different phenomenon entirely, a genuinely psychiatric disorder.  This seems to be a very small number of clergy, no higher than that of the larger American population. 

So to say that celibacy is not an issue is, I believe, very misleading. Mandatory celibacy not only rules out those who choose adult-adult heterosexual life-commitments but provides an attraction and a cover for the psychosexually immature.  Some of these mature in the process of spiritual growth and healthy fraternity.  Others, unfortunately do not.  Spiritual maturity and healthy community will not change a person’s basic sexual orientation, but it will empower him (or her) to live as spiritually (and therefore psychologically) healthy adults.   

Perhaps on a future blog we can look at how an all-male leadership model complicates this picture, but for now what might bear thinking about is what seminaries and religious formation programs, as well as clergy on-going education and formation,  need to do to foster psycho-sexual maturation.   This probably won’t happen until psycho-sexual maturity becomes an identified criterion for hierarchical leadership.   

Roots of the Reformation VI: The Spiritual Renewal of the Laity

illumination from a Reformation Era choirbook
in Krakow  Poland

Much of the groundwork of the Protestant Reformations was laid in the centuries immediately preceding.  Luther did not materialize out of thin air and he—and the other reformers—were the heirs of a rich and complex theological heritage that manifested itself in the the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  Catholics tend to see the Reformers as innovators who scotched their Catholic roots for something new, but in fact most of the Reformers—and Luther in particular—were actually conservatives who were trying to salvage what was best, or what they estimated as best, in the ancient and medieval Church and pass it on to future generations and one of the characteristics of the medieval Church that they—and again Luther in particular—wanted to pass on was a rich and vibrant life of faith for the individual. 

This is always a problem in Christianity.  What does a life of faithful discipleship mean?  Is a disciple to be a loyal member of the Church, observant of its laws and unquestioning of its authority?  Is a disciple one who has a living and vibrant relationship with Christ, rooted in the scriptures and a life of prayer?  Of course the answer doesn’t require an either/or answer.  But too often a lifeless and formal religion is what people are introduced to and warned not to go beyond by those whose faith is in the Church as an Institution rather than in Christ risen from the dead and present in his Body, the Church, the community of the baptized.  Sometimes the Institutional Church is made into an idol that leads us away from the worship of the Father in Spirit and Truth that Jesus calls us to in the Gospel of John. 

Let me give an example.  Father William Menninger, a Trappist Monk of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer MA was scheduled to give a program on contemplative prayer at St. Ambrose Parish in Annandale VA last February. Father William is a highly respected and widely known authority on contemplative prayer.  He has worked for years with his fellow Trappist, Abbot Thomas Keating in bringing the wisdom of the monastic tradition to ordinary Christians—Catholics and Protestants alike—teaching a method of contemplative prayer called “Centering Prayer.”  Centering Prayer is a form of “acquired contemplation,” that is, a process of preparing the soul for the gift of contemplation proper, “infused contemplation,” by quieting the senses, the imagination, the intellect, and the will.  There is nothing “new age” about this—the practice can be found in one of the most important medieval spiritual texts: The Cloud of Unknowing as well as the Eastern Christian Philokalia, and can be traced back through Cassian to the monastic Desert Fathers and Mothers. It is also consistent with and echoes the Carmelite Tradition, most notably Saint John of the Cross.  What is the problem?

Frankly I don’t know what the problem is, or at Saint Ambrose, was.  But the pastor got phone calls, did “some research” and cancelled his permission for Father William to speak on the parish campus.  This isn’t unusual.  Many of the clergy today are frightened of their congregants being introduced to advanced levels of spirituality.  As one priest in the Newark Archdiocese told me: “What happens if they (the laity) become holier than the priest? Why will they listen to us?”  He has a good question.  Why indeed?  And in fact, it is a danger, a real danger, to the Institutional Church when the laity outstrip the clergy in wisdom, compassion, and faith—all fruits of a life of unitive prayer.  Indeed, in the centuries after the Protestant Reformations, many in the Institutional Church discouraged or even prohibited the laity—and even prohibited many priests and religious—from being introduced to contemplative prayer because they recognized how prayer, in the hands of the laity, had left the Church vulnerable to the influence of the Reformers.  Some of the Reformers—and I emphasize some—were men of genuine personal holiness and faith.  Luther is one such figure.  Despite what most Catholics have been taught, Luther was a man of great spiritual maturity and orthodox Christian faith.  The Catholic-Lutheran dialogues of the last forty years—study sessions sponsored by the Holy See and consisting of both Catholic and Lutheran scholars that examined key doctrinal issues—have found in their study and conversations that Luther was in substantial agreement with Catholic doctrine on questions like the Real Presence  of Christ in the Eucharist.  We have also discovered that Catholic teaching is in substantial agreement with Luther on such signature Lutheran doctrines as Justification by Faith.  This isn’t to say that there are not very important questions that we do not yet have to resolve before we can restore the unity of the Church, but only to say that Luther was no theological mad man.  It also must be remembered that I am talking about Luther—not Calvin, or Knox, or Thomas Műnster.  Each of the Reformers have to be dealt with separately.     

Martin Luther was highly influenced by a German Dominican writer, Johannes Tauler, who in turn had been influenced by the great medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart.  Luther and Tauler were not contemporaries—far from it, Tauler had lived almost two centuries before Luther.    There exists a 1508 edition of Tauler’s sermons, however, that belonged to Luther and has Luther’s marginal notes.  Tauler’s conviction that mere assent to doctrine does not constitute faith, but that faith requires a personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ was the motivating drive, or one of the motivating energies, in Luther’s understanding of salvation by faith.  This in turn would motivate John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, two centuries later in his impassioned search for a feeling of being saved.  As the English are not known for their sentimentalism, it was a frustrating search which reached a somewhat tepid apogee in his “Aldersgate Experience.”  While Wesley may have never done better to feel his heart “strangely warmed,” it did stamp the Methodist movement with a great emphasis on “feeling” and as Methodism has probably stamped American Religion, including American Catholicism, with its distinctive subjective enthusiasm, it affects us even today.  In fact, in as that circles are always vicious, this desire for emotional satisfaction in religion brings us back to where we started, to those who find the search for that feeling of intimacy with God motivates them to “centering prayer” and other religious experiences, as well to those who fear “centering prayer” and other religious experiences, being satisfied instead with a meatless broth of doctrine and discipline for their spiritual nourishment.   But that should not be a problem in Catholicism where there is room for all.  In the next posting we will look at the medieval spiritual renaissance, the Devotio Moderna, that created this emphasis on personalized relationship with God.