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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
A Survey3/07/2006 13:24:11Here are the answers I gave to a survey by Jeff Guhin of bustedhalo.com. They might be of interest. 1. Please define (in your own words!) the following four terms... a. faith - the persistence of belief, practice, and hope as constituted both in one's community and despite one's community. b. spirituality - the sense of seeing the world in which human beings have souls and it matters that they exist. c. religion - how spirituality forms itself among people who must relate and communicate with each other. d. church - a religious community that knows itself (spiritually and by faith) to be the image, reflection, or spouse of the God of the universe. 2. How are these things different, particularly religion and church? Faith and spirituality are abstract, they are the content that we claim to have. Religion is the mundane form that they take, made of traditions, ritual, good, bad, and such. Church is the spiritualized, faithful vision of it. 3. Why is church (or Church) relevant today? Is it relevant? If not, why not? "Today" I take to mean the modern world, and the modern world I take to mean the differentiated society, with radical separation of labor and segmentation of communities. Going to church is relevant because it brings together people of the whole community together again and offers us the vision God might have of us. There are a million different reasons it might be relevant besides this. "Eucharist" might be reason enough. 4. Why does it seem as though so few young Catholics are concerned about issues of Church, such as what the Pope or Bishops say, or the Church organizational structure? Hopefully because they are more focused on Christ, as they should be, and are letting the grown-ups worry about who gets to wear what hat. The hierarchy is very confusing anyway because it is so foreign to anybody being raised in a community with democratic values. 5. Would it be a fair analysis to say the only people that seem to care about this stuff are more "Orthodox" Catholics? No. I would even suggest that "Orthodox" and "Catholic" are almost opposites, though not quite. That which is universal is orthodox by implication, and to say orthodox beyond that (i.e. an "orthodox catholic") makes the church into a political party defined against its opponents. I would say no more than the fact of it: they seem to care about this stuff more. Somebody has got to do it. 6. Why is it that more liberal or progressive Church Reform organizations like Call to Action or Voice of the Faithful are full of older folks and have such a lot of trouble recruiting younger members? Probably because they were around to witness the battles that the church fought when they were younger. Now we only see the result, largely empty of the serious rethinking and upheaval that Vatican II caused. We are not being asked to think about our Church as hard as they were, and it shows. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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