Lacking in one thing

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him,
“You are lacking in one thing. 
Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

(Click on any of the images in this post for a larger, clearer view. Do it with this old-school vintage infographic in particular. From a 1947 Catholic high school textbook) 

This is kind of a garbage post – reworking some old material with some new stuff. I don’t feel badly about that because this is the Internet, and the folks who read the original stuff aren’t around much anymore, and the new folks weren’t here then, and besides I’m not charging you a dime, so click away if you like!

The Synod on Synodality is underway, and here are Pope Francis’ opening remarks – on the “Beginning of the Synodal Journey.”

There’s not much to surprise here, as we’ve been hearing these themes for a while: communion, participation, mission – and the chance to be a part of three opportunities: to become a structurally synodal Church, a listening Church and Church of closeness – and avoiding three particular risks in the process: formalism, intellectualism, complacency

An earlier look at one aspect in this space.

The emphasis is, of course, all about the new, expressing, as I have said before, a certain anxiety about the present: about what has and more urgently, what has not happened since the Second Vatican Council, and about the diminishing credibility and role of the Church in most of the world and the indifference with which even most of its adherents view its role in their lives.

Have you heard of “clout-chasing?” It’s a social-media term for those who attach themselves to the popular accounts in order to build, yes, clout.

I confess that observing the Vatican’s words and actions these days gives off a strong whiff of clout chasing and a complete lack of confidence in this, what – two thousand-year old institution.

For as radically different as the world today is – it’s not that much different. The same sins abound, the same sanctity is within our grasp. Just – at least with the sins – on a far greater scale.

Do you know how you start the process of listening to the Spirit and figuring out what discipleship calls for in the present moment?

You listen to Jesus, and then you do what He says.

Or you at least try.

A great part of the completely justifiable concern about us Catholics these days is, indeed, the complacency of the privileged and the persistence of such great poverty and disparities of wealth.

We could meet and listen and draft some synodal soundings, but perhaps consider this, if not instead, at least before we get rolling on this process of a journey or journey of a process or whatever it is.

It used to be that everyone understood, even as they lived it out in the flawed way humans do, that the ideal Christian life was marked by humility, modesty, simplicity, and even asceticism. A Catholic life was ideally organized around practicing the virtues and the Works of Mercy.  To give a concrete example, I have below reproduced some scans from a mid-century (1947)  American Catholic high school religion textbook – this is book 4, so it’s for seniors.  The last half of the book is concerned with issues of Justice, and then apologetics.  The justice section is even longer than the apologetics section and contains a detailed outline of Quadragesimo Anno. 

I’d invite you to take a look at these pages – and to see if you think, even from these brief excerpts, whether these young people were being taught that the ideal Catholic life was closed-in, self-referential and narrow in 1947, before the Light Shone Forth.

In fact, it is the opposite.  The Catholic was taught he or she had a DUTY to not live for oneself, but instead to live out the virtues and the Works of Mercy. To not do so was a SIN. 

So what is it that happened so that 70 years after this textbook was published, and fifty years after the Council that supposedly shot the Catholic laity straight into the world with all that ammunition to “build the Kingdom,” that we’re scrambling, working hard to help folks discern their gifts’n’talents so they might feel moved to go out and set the world on fire? And still, hardly anyone seems to care?

I wonder about this a lot. If you’ve been around, you’ve heard this before.

I’ve settled on three points of explaining this to myself.

• Prosperity.  There’s more general prosperity now than ever before in human history, and you know what The Man said about wealth, needles and camels.  It’s true, and it doesn’t just apply to billionaires.  The satisfaction that we find in our stuff deafens us, and what does get through is rationalized: As long as I’m not too attached. Ach, taxes. I pay taxes that pay for food stamps for Those People Over There. Doesn’t that count? 
• Social and economic segregation. A lot of people who are economically comfortable are able to live most of their lives without regular, meaningful encounters and relationships with others outside their class and that includes in the workplace, school, neighborhood and most significantly, modern parish.

Both of these act as enablers to our blindness.

And…I actually think, for 21st century Catholics, this next one is key. Let’s see if I can explain it in a way that makes sense because it’s kind of a mess in my head:

• The emphasis of post-Vatican II formation of both children and adults has been freedom and the individual relationship with God, mediated to some extent through the Church, but mostly through the sacraments, rather than the bigger, thicker tradition.  The “old” mode of formation in discipleship was about sharing the love of Christ, but it was articulated within a bigger philosophical and theological framework and a framework of responsibility and duty to norms articulated by the Church in the name of Christ and visible in the lives of the saints.

So what happened? That was dispensed with. Boom. Gone. All the talk of “the virtues” and the “works of Mercy” was mostly abandoned because it was seen as at best irrelevant to and and worst constrictive of the spiritual freedom and individuality of each person’s journey. Medieval probably. That’s the worst, amiright? S

So we are not to do those things because a “rule” tells us to or because we are “fearful” of the consequences or because we are children who have to be directed how to act by the patriarchal Church.  

No, no, no. Now – we give freely! Out of love, rooted in our own individual story, responding to the Spirit at any given moment, inspired by the example of Jesus our brother.

So….what seems then, to be left is…what?

Seems to me it’s us, plus some other people who live in another part of town and are “the poor” – a group of “others,” definitely, and then some idealistic words that we know Jesus said that really aren’t that much different from what other good and noble leaders have said, so hey, take your pick and do what you think (or want) the Spirit is moving you to do.

There’s no comprehensive understanding of what the world really is, organically developed over two thousand years, articulated in a common and fairly well-understood philosophical and theological language. (read the excerpts below to see the difference).

I especially like the reminder, regarding the virtues: But the world hardly knows them, but it must be told about them, and as it will hardly listen to the Church, you must do the preaching by your lives. 

An interesting recognition of reality!

And of the importance of the lay role in the world.  No, it wasn’t invented in the last few decades.

On this page, there’s a treatment of covetousness and possessions.

Which brings us to today’s Gospel, doesn’t it?

The Church’s treatment of this issue is comprehensive, detailed, and aware of the realities of human life.

But how does it get communicated to most of us now, in 2021? A quick retelling of this encounter between Jesus and the rich young man, an allusion to St. Francis of Assisi and, once more, a call to use your gifts’n’talents to help folks. In whatever way you feel called.

And not much else.

Do you see the difference between that and the past articulation of these issues? The reasons for the proper Christian attitude toward stuff is articulated in a context which is rooted in truths about the nature of the human person, the nature of created things, and our proper relationship to those things in light of our final end and the purpose of our life on earth.

Perhaps this was inadquate. Perhaps, in reality, it did come across and was lived as one big game of Chutes and Ladders with randomly established rules by a distant authority, as David Lodge described it in his novel, How Far Can You Go?

I don’t know. I wasn’t there. And I’m for sure not looking at all of this through nostalgic glasses. I’ve written about this before a great deal.  There was obviously a big problem in the pre-Vatican II Church if things fell apart so quickly afterwards. Obviously.

But. 

My point, for the few who are still reading, is that as it evolved over the centuries, the Catholic sense was that the individual’s moral life was oriented towards living in imitation of Christ, and the framework for that was clear: virtues/works of mercy lived by people most of whom did not have a lot, if anything to spare, materially.

The idea that a Catholic life was visibly marked, above all, by living out the virtues in a sacrificial way, living humbly and simply – and to do so wasn’t just a call from the Spirit. Folks, it was the duty of the baptized.

What you can probably see is that new-stuff-in-the-Spirit talk annoys me. More than that, it raises my hackles and makes me suspicious. What I’m touching on in this blog post – how contemporary calls to Catholics to live the moral life, as reflected in today’s Gospel, are detached from the deep well of Catholic tradition and experience – is a feature, not a bug, of this Synod talk. It’s not a good thing – not because we want to be closed to the Spirit – but because the rhetoric diminishes our necessary engagement with the deep, Spirit-formed life of the Church as it’s been lived over the centuries, all over the world. I mean, it wasn’t perfect, but it worked fairly well, raised up lots of saints, created massive and creative and responsive institutions that ameliorated the suffering of millions.

I’d much prefer, if trying to figure out how to make the Church a more powerful witness to the Gospel in the world today, to begin there – the Gospel and then the richness of two thousand years of experience and wisdom (and mistakes) – than just constantly being pointed to some ambiguous “new” thing that the “Spirit” is going to guide me towards.

Because you know what? All that talk, reducing authority to the person of the guy holding the microphone at the moment, all that ignore the past, trust the Spirit talk comes across to me as trust us more than anything else. Which in turn sounds like a call, not so much to clarity, but to rationalization.

I trust Jesus, Scripture and the warp and woof of Catholic tradition – which is ambiguous at times, which shifts and develops, but actually, if you can stop being so rigid and ideological about the whole thing, is actually very consistent and clear on the fundamentals – like how to live your life as a disciple of Jesus: sacrificial love, self-denial, detachment, simplicity and then even more sacrificial love.

No matter what your station in life or where your home is or what you do for a living – it’s the same for all of us.

We don’t find more Jesus in chasing the clout of the new. No, in obeying Jesus in humility and openness, informed by the richness and truth of Catholic experience, every day – every hour – we find something, well – new.

We don’t do good stuff because The Synod or the Pope Wants Us To. We don’t do it even because we feel moved by emotions we’ll label the Spirit today.

 We follow Christ because we are baptized and he calls us.

And the life he calls us to is difficult, and Church teachers and institutions have failed countless times in articulating it clearly, standing up to cultural, social and political pressures, and yes, living it. But at the same time, with all that – we all know what that life is, right? We can obfuscate and rationalize, but we all, deep in our hearts, know – and we know we’re all falling short, and we know we’re more like the rich young man than we want to admit, but we also know without doubt what Jesus says – and that he means what he says:

“How hard it is for those who have wealth
to enter the kingdom of God!”
The disciples were amazed at his words.
So Jesus again said to them in reply,
“Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves,
“Then who can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said,
“For human beings it is impossible, but not for God.
All things are possible for God.”