Wednesday Forum: Well one might ask: what is the point? (Wednesday Forum)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Wednesday, June 04, 2008, 13:29 (1841 days ago)

WELL ONE MIGHT ASK: WHAT IS THE POINT?

One of the contributors to our forum, James, posed the question in the forum this morning (See: Post id=12901). It's a question that intersects with questions on my own mind this morning.

As mentioned in a post (id=12895) I made on the forum late last night, earlier last night I went out and recorded a conversation with a friend, Adel Ghali, which I will be publishing on Catholica on Saturday. As I wrote, it's not an interview. What I have endeavoured to do is record as honestly as I can a conversation between two mates discussing as honestly as we can what we really believe based on our life experiences. More about that on Saturday.

When I arrived home and before I went to sleep I continued reading a bit more of Paul O'Shea's book. I have to confess, I'm now getting to the point where I am finding it difficult to put it down. More on that in a minute.

This morning I woke up wondering what to take up as the theme for today's Wednesday Forum. This has been another successful innovation on Catholica judging by the reader response so I think we will continue it. I will be throwing it over to other members to prepare the lead post and in future, like our series going back to look at the commentaries on the Spirituality of Thomas Merton, they will endeavour to re-explore past conversations we've had on Catholica. More about that on future Wednesdays.

As I was searching around to decide on the theme for today the post and question James asked struck me as a good starting point. I have a confession to make. I am really wondering: what is the point also?

TWO OTHER INPUTS…

Two other inputs contributed to what I am writing today. After I'd finished the interview last night I drove on down to Zoltan Budimcevic's studio which has become almost the second home for my wife Amanda over the last couple of months. It's the first time I've been down there to witness one of the recording sessions. Man, these two, and the other musicians who are called in for particular sessions, are really firing. These albums are going to be something else. They, and I, can't wait until they're finished and the fruits of all this endeavour — which is really two years of endeavour — can be shared with the young people, and the world, whom it is all being prepared for. The song I want to share with you though is not one that they've yet given the studio treatment to. It's one I recorded down there last year but only with my little hand-held mini-disc recorder. It's a Marian song written by Amanda and the former Director of the Catholic Education Office, Mick Bezzina. (Mick's now a professor at ACU.)

Why am I playing you this song? The reason is is because it links into the final input which was a link Rich provided in another post to an article in Commonweal Magazine (See: www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php?id_article=2098) which gives us new insight into Mariology through some ancient Syrian texts. Mary had a confession to make too. In a sense it can be boiled down to the questions James poses: What is the point? Pull the other leg, Angel. What are you expecting me to believe?

Here's a quote from the Commonweal article:

Would we ever have imagined that Mary wouldn’t let the astonished Gabriel get in a word during the Annunciation?

Who are you, sir?
And what is this that you utter?
What you are saying is remote from me
And what it means I have no idea.

Are we prepared to hear the angel snap back at her in this dialogue poem?

It would be amazing in you if you were to answer back
annulling the message which I have brought to you.

This confrontation is part of a large body of anonymous dialogue poems (or sogyatha) based on biblical themes. In this particular poem, Mary continues to fend off her visitor with remarkable chutzpah. From the fourth to the sixth century, sogyatha were often chanted in churches by antiphonal choirs of men and women. The vocal poems featured the stories of biblical women like Sarah or the Samaritan woman. In this instance, the men sang Gabriel’s lines, the women Mary’s.

Each of these dialogue poems consisted of serious arguments between faith and reason, artfully dramatized, and ending, as this one does, on the side of faith. But for this early community, relying on faith did not mean simply renouncing one’s intellect or common sense. In the debate with Gabriel, for example, Mary argues first for reason, and she doesn’t make it easy for the archangel, who soon becomes exasperated:

How is it then that you are not afraid
to query the thing which the Father willed?

Mary admits that she is afraid, but says she must question Gabriel nonetheless. Clearly, it would have been better for the angel if he had listened more carefully to God’s advice in another anonymous poem:

Do not stand up to Mary or argue,
For she is stronger than you in argument.
Do not speak too many words to her,
For she is stronger than you in her replies.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If she starts to question you closely,
Disclose to her the mystery and then be off.

MY CONFESSION:

In my conversation with Adel Ghali last night and in my reading of Paul O'Shea's book I've come to a new realisation of what I am about. Pursuing this Catholica venture is literally insane from any rational perspective. (Perhaps Michael Kelly SJ was right inviting me to join his "real" world?) It has nearly driven Amanda and I broke. We are sustained alone by the dream that eventually it will work when it can attract a large enough readership — but that really does have to be massive for it to exist through advertising revenue alone. Why do it? What's the point?

Here's my answer, and confession. Honestly, I think what I am trying to do, what I think Paul O'Shea is trying to do (using a slightly different formula to me), what I think Tom Lee is endeavouring to do with his book, which is a slightly different variation again, is we're trying to answer this question: do we really believe what we've been brought up to believe? It's essentially the same set of questions this naïve, probably uneducated peasant girl was asking of the Angel. Do we believe the yarn that has been spun to us?

I have to confess frankly. I have come to the conclusion I do not believe it. I'm not prepared to leave the question there though. I don't think Paul O'Shea is either and neither is Tom Lee. Our consciences won't allow it. So, if we don't believe the yarn we have been spun, essentially what we are endeavouring to ask is, what do we believe then? What is "the real truth"?

I have to confess also that Paul O'Shea's book is having as profound effect on me as that commissioned endeavour I was invited to undertake of writing up the history of the Popes who have led the Church over the course of the history of the European settlement of Australia (See: www.catholicaustralia.com.au/page.php?pg=austchurch-popes00). With few exceptions I honestly think most of the Popes of the last 200 years were deluding themselves. They were chasing fantasies. There is a "truth" there though somewhere deep down in the Catholic insight. Our collective quest is to re-discover it. Unfortunately our priests and bishops today have largely gone off "chasing fantasies". They are no longer seriously interested in the pursuit of truth. They're trying to bolster an institution or an establishment. We can no longer afford to do that. Our ultimate quest is NOT about proving that we're right and everyone else is wrong. It is about pursuing those questions that a naïve virgin posed two millennia ago.

And speaking of the contribution (and power) of women there is a profound irony in all of this. I recently said to a friend that I honestly think when John Paul II finally made it back to the starting post the first person his inner self would have been wanting to meet is not God, or the Holy Spirit to ask "how have I done?". It would have been his mum. "Mum, did I do alright? Was I a good boy in your eyes?" For all the positions of high rank he rose to in the world Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII, the Pope who reigned though my childhood) emerges in my eyes as another "mummy's boy". (The photograph Paul O'Shea chose for the front of his book is itself revealing.) That is not what this whole game of "Catholicism" or "spirituality" is ultimately all about. Neither is the alternative some butch, camp game played by the bully boys who endeavour to belt human society into submission and who are equally incapable of facing the truth in their own psycho-sexual makeup.

Over to you: what do you honestly believe today? What is this spiritual quest ultimately all about?

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]