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What is Catholicism?
Dear Friends,
I was tempted yesterday to respond to one of the respondents to my Christmas Greeting on Cooees from the Remnant: "we are all entitled to our delusions". Then the thought struck me: "what, precisely, is Catholicism?" One could ask the same question in response to some of the comments Robert Blair Kaiser puts before us today in the conclusion to his series on the Crusades and Holy War. At one point Kaiser himself poses the question: what was in the mind of these Crusaders? Today we might scoff at the Islamic terrorists who believe that in dying in their "holy war" they are going to be provided with express entry into heaven. Many Catholics believed that once upon a time. How many today believe the Pope — or any priest — can give any of us a guaranteed passport into paradise? Our views on what 'being Catholic' means have changed. Our friends over in the remnant are pretty sure they know what it means to be 'Catholic' — and they also seem pretty sure that I (perhaps all of us here at Catholica) don't measure up. We're not 'true Catholics' like them.
 The same question seems to crop up in the book by Karen Armstrong I'm reading at the moment: The Case for God. In different phases of history people have had very different ideas about what, precisely, Catholicism means. Some see it as something akin to barracking for a particular football code where you have to learn the rules of that code and obey them. Some see it as a system of prayer, meditation, liturgy and/or ritual that in some mysterious way makes us better people — and eventually brings the reward of salvation. Others see it more as a "system of belief and rules" and if you are obedient to those rules the reward for that obedience is salvation. Others again seem to see it as a "quest for truth" — i.e. "ultimate Truth", understanding the world, and Life as God understands the world, or Life. We could go on … others seems to see it merely as some cultural thing you are born with. Just as you are born as an Australian, an American, a Peruvian, or whatever, one is "born a Catholic" and there's not much you can do about it. Essentially it is not about belief, or rules, its something you are born with.
Thinking back over my own life I'm pretty sure we were imbued at school with a fairly rigid sense of what was required to be a Catholic. It was all about rules, following a ritual, being part of a team, and if you obeyed all the rules and didn't make too many mistakes God would be good to you rewarding you, if you were lucky, with a few miracles on the way through and eventually a "seat in heaven" with all the angels and saints and our dead rellies. I wonder what sense young people are imbued with today? I wonder if there is a collective understanding in the minds of, say, the teachers in our Catholic education systems around the world of what, precisely, they think it means to be a Catholic today? Do our bishops today have some collective understanding of what they think it means to "be Catholic"?
I've moved past all the hoop-jumping understandings that I held earlier in my life. I do think 'being Catholic' is certainly about trying to become a better person. But this is not some game of 'social conformism'. It's about learning to think like God — learning how to make intelligent moral choices that don't cause our lives to screw up, or which screw up the lives of our neighbours or other members of our families, or the lives of others in the Church we belong to. Of all the reading I've done over decades I think the words of St Gregory of Nyssa sum it up best: being Catholic is about trying to "become like God". It's not some game of trying to suck up to God, or trying to prove what an obedient little goody-two shoes we think we are, it's literally about learning how to think and speak intelligently and how to act in a morally intelligent way — in the way God might act if he/she was facing the choices we have to decide between, or if he/she were having to dig themselves out of some hole they've found themselves in. In large matters and small matters learning how to make morally wise choices — the choices that lead to eternal life rather than to an eternal death, or nothingness. As I read it, what Gregory of Nyssa was endeavouring to say is that life is NOT some game of chance. It's not a game of "snakes and ladders". We can choose to think and act intelligently, we can choose to reason and navigate our lives in a God-like or Divine way. Salvation is not some "reward" for obedience or 'being good'. Salvation is something we have to learn to think, and act our way into.
We might scoff at the Crusaders today, or the Islamic suicide bombers who think their actions will bring them into the company of ten virgins and eternal happiness, but what do we really believe these days? If you have a moment amidst the busyness of Christmas I'd certainly be interested in hearing your thoughts in our forum and I'm sure many others would value the perspectives also.
<Link to Kaiser's commentary>
www.catholica.com.au/gc3/rbk1/005_rbk1_231209.php |
