Rector's Conference
Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSBFebruary 23, 2016
I was speaking with one our erudite seminarians
the other day and I received a very nice compliment about conferences and so
was grateful for that. I also received from the same seminarian a sideways
critique, and I always take even sideways critiques as a challenge. This
seminarian said that while I often offer a critique of the various aspects of
our contemporary culture, I seldom often concrete ideas as to how these aspects
of culture might be readily addressed. It is a fair critique and one that I might
take shelter is in that I am a theologian by vocation and in general do not
offer concrete answers to anything.
That, however, would be a bit of a copout as the youth of bygone days used to
say. So there is the challenge.
So now, turning to the task at hand, we are
examining during this time of Lent, the book of John Allen, The Global War on Christians. While John
Allen is discussing the situation of the Church in other parts of the world, nevertheless, the analysis takes root in
any number of issues that affect us here and now.
Life, it would seem, is filled with
contradiction. Perhaps it is especially the case with what we egregiously call
modernity. This is what we are told, so it must be true. We are told to expect
one thing and that is chaos. How could it not be so? If we subscribe, as we are
told we must subscribe to the ideal that each person has a right (a seemingly
natural right) to form their own opinions, create their own values and
enlighten themselves (or leave themselves dim as the case may be) in their own
way, how can it be that life is not filled with contradictions. There is no
goal given in our culture for which we are to strive save those of
individuality and vague ideas of happiness. The key to understanding this is
that we accepted this ideal unconditionally. We believe the myth of
contradiction. We accept that it is the order of the day and yet it never fails
to catch us off guard, to surprise us when it rears its head in our midst like
the many headed hydra that it is. In other words we are given the cards of
contradiction to play and then are surprised when the deck makes no sense to
us.
We are told that our various systems of
communication have made us better connected. We get tweeted a hundred times a
day. We spend a lot of time on facebook and other social media sites. Our
phones are constantly moaning with updates. But I ask you again: Are we really
better connected? Are we feeling more a part of something or is this hyperbole
of media merely the illusion of connection?
Now, back to my friendly interlocutor, we might
ask the question: How can we change? One of our tasks as Church leaders, no
matter where we are in that matrix of leadership is to demonstrate that the
ideal of connection is true, but it is equally true that we are not achieving
it in our cultural matrix as it currently is conformed. In this context, the
task of the Church is to build and maintain authentic community, communities
that might readily begin with the domestic Church. Ask yourselves this
question: In the parishes you know, how many of them are focusing in a very
concrete way on building the domestic Church? As community in the authentic
sense, our parishes, our dioceses, our seminaries cannot and should not depend
upon the established cultural means
of communicating, namely media and the internet. Let’s show a different side of
connection by establishing practices that are personal and interactional. Here
are some examples: Home visits are a great way to reach out not only to those
who are shut in and in need of care but to reach out to all of our families and
parishioners. Here in the seminary that means creating authentic social
experiences that are interactive. We need to show in our parish and seminary
structures how essential skin and talk and eye contact are in authentic human
connection. Nothing, absolutely nothing can take the place of personal
presence. A well-sent text or an email, or a tweet can never take the place of
handholding in a hospital or funeral home. Knowing that the priest has roused
himself from a wonderful slumber in the middle of a cold night to make his way
to the hospital emergency room touches at the heart, literally at the heart, of
human longing. His remaining with folks, sitting with folks, just being with
folks in a personal way, getting coffee, fretting, becoming anxious, mirroring
anxiety is a blessing no artificial means of connection can replace. That is
why I think CPE is an essential component to our formation. If we are forced to
meet people in need, or to confront our own demons in interpersonal groups with
(gasp) women and (double gasp) Protestants, it gives us stamina on our feet and
relief (though we may not yet realize it) from the thought bubbles we create by
only immersing ourselves in the blogs and websites of those who think like us. The
hallway becomes the way of being connected. Throwing shoes in the air is a
means of building community. The rough and tumble of human engagement is the
way in which God insinuates himself into our lives in a concrete way as he so
earnestly desires to do in the Eucharist.
Second, we are told that we live in a globalized
community. We are told that technology and other means have provided us with
the ability to understand and connect with those around the world, in other
cultures and in other social climates. Advanced means of travel have allowed us
to go to places that would only have been dreams for the very few in the past.
We have the ability to know things and experience things that our ancestors
literally only dreamed about, and yet we have to ask ourselves this question:
In light of the cultural ideal and in light of technology, are we better off?
What is our experience? This I know, that in the
current election climate there is a great deal of talk about isolation, about
cutting ourselves off from what is happening in other parts of the world. There
is the talk of building walls to “protect” ourselves from those we consider too
foreign for our tastes. By strategizing the best ways
to maximize the challenges we face locally, we are giving ourselves an out to
consider the needs of those in other places around the world. In our book by
John Allen, I would be willing to bet that in our community there are two basic
reactions: The first is, I never knew this. How can these important ideas have
been positioned in such a receded places in our imagination that we do not
know? A second reaction is this: I really don’t care about any of this. This is
not about us and our situation. I am not surprised by this reaction because I
think if they perused John Allen’s book, many of our fellow citizens would
share this opinion. Polls in our current election bear this out. We don’t
really care about what is happening in other places. Unfortunately that often
trickles down into Church life. Do we really understand the Church as Catholic
as well as apostolic? Do we connect somehow, not only theoretically but
concretely with the needs of our suffering brothers and sisters around the
world? Are we sensitive to the needs of
say our Hispanic brothers and sisters or those in our parishes who comes from
other cultures and who may in fact make up the bulk of any parish’s population,
but whose existence is still confined to Sunday afternoons, whose influences
are hidden from parish life and leadership. It is interesting that we continue
to wonder why Hispanic Catholics are leaving the Church of their ancestors in
droves. Could it be that their needs are not being met and they do not feel
welcome in older, traditionally Irish or Italian parishes? We all came from
somewhere at sometime. I wonder if American are not only losing sight of their
heritage, but losing our reputation of a culture of hospitality and welcome for
vulnerable people.
What about the situation in our seminary. Are we
a welcoming community? We certainly represent a wonderful mix of folks. We are
a global community and I like to think, although I may be wrong, that we do a
good job of respecting and honoring cultural variations in our community. Do
all of our brothers feel welcomed here? Are we still sneering and perhaps even
absenting ourselves when Mass is in Spanish? Do we have a particular cultural
idea about how Mass should be celebrated and is that truly a Catholic ideal? We
are offered in this community the perfect testing grounds for an understanding
of a truly global Church, a Church both militant and suffering. Will we take
advantage of it and also transport and translate what we may learn here about
acceptance to the broader Church we are called to serve?
Third we are told individualism is the order of
the day. We are told to stand by our hard one independence and to understand
that the personal assertion of values is the order of the day. Is it true? I
wonder. Are we authentically gaining access in our opinion to the very forge
and working house of thought, or are we merely lazy in our intellectual,
cultural and personal development taking on the opinions of others that we have
deemed more qualified when in point of fact many of these so called experts are
just pundits putting forth their own agendas in a will to power. If we are told
that our culture gives us the option to think for ourselves, then I challenge
you to think for yourself and to move away from placing your faith in misplaced
magisteria. The epistemological ideal of individualism found for example in the
thought of cultural pundit, John Locke, holds that we all create our own truths
via particular means. Well and good, but the same epistemological ideal also
carries no goal as its natural telos.
In other words we might all come individually to truth but the Truth to which
we aspire is an authentic objective good, not a subjective mishmash of opinions
and throw-away ideals. We claim that individualism and a lack of objectivity is
a kind of freedom, but I choose the Gospel message. If we know the Truth then
the Truth will set us free. Only the Truth will set us free. Only the truth
will allow us to become our authentic selves and we are fortunate for that
Truth has a name and His name is Jesus.
What about practicalities? Well I say, what about
evangelization? Our coming to accept the Truth of Jesus Christ comes directly
from our ability to tell that Truth to others thus creating a bond with others
that leads us out of the forest of individualism and into the bright field of
authentic humanity. We are told to be bold and not to depend on other people.
Yet that lonely island we create for ourselves does not fulfill the inner drive
we have to be a part of something, something larger and something real. The
Church is where, innately people want to go. Are we making our Churches, our
community a welcoming place? This is the virtue of hospitality. In other words,
what every single person in the world longs to hear is: Come and be a part of
this community, come and be a part of the Body of Christ. Do we welcome others
in our parishes? Do we welcome strangers here? I think we do a good job and I
hear from former strangers that we do a good job. Let’s think of ways of doing
a better job. Do we authentically build hope for one another in insisting on
showing forth the values of community life or do we groan at the prospect of
another meeting, another social, another forced recreation? Do we only put up
with social life in order to get back to the screens? Let’s think of ways of
doing a better job.
Fourth, we are told that we have a very advanced
education system here, that we are the most educated people in world. That
brothers and sisters is just an outright lie. Here I will state my bias,
although many of you already know my bias. When we look at the ideals of
education established by John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University, we might be stunned how the Catholic
vision of education has devolved. I was recently speaking with a group in which
I stated, as I say almost everywhere, that the primary concern for us is that
Catholic adults are almost completely ignorant of their faith. In turn, their
children are having a harder time, not only assimilating the teachings of the
Church but also seeing the importance of that teaching when it is seemingly so
insignificant to their parents. In other words, as a child, why should I take
the time to learn something that “grownups” do not seem to know nor want to know.
There is a problem here however. Catechetical programs in parishes are
essential. Adult education programs are essential and I truly believe that most
adults and children in our Church want to know about their faith. The problem
is that quality theological teaching, at a level folks can take in is difficult
to attain when the matrix for holding that theological teaching is not present
in the larger sphere of learning. Newman purports in The Idea of a University that all knowledge is held in tension by
the presence of other knowledge. In other words, to fully understand theology
and philosophy, other intellectual ideals, such as history, language,
literature, politics, sciences, all must also be present. We only really
understand things intellectually within the matrix of what we call the liberal
arts. Liberal arts are dead. Every morning I receive an email from a website
called University Business. I read it faithfully. Almost every day there is the
story of some university that is discontinuing its liberal arts programming,
history, philosophy, art, etc. How can it be that in less than a century the
cornerstone of authentic learning has been so disgraced?
In our culture we have lost the ideal of an
educated person, replacing them with persons of high skill. We know our field,
a field increasingly narrowed by the evil archangel of specialization. If we
are ignorant of larger spheres of knowledge, or even the questions that those
larger spheres create, how can we be a part of say a political system that must
ask questions which are far removed from the laws of this or that science
narrowly applied? Is it any wonder that our political attitudes are turning
increasingly to the visceral with appeals to the rank elements of our character
now at the forefront?
What can we do here? We must create here a new
cultural ideal. It will be, it is, resisted by some of you and some of us. It
must move forward. It is the ideal that Catholic priests and other ministers of
the Gospel must be well-educated and well-rounded people. Again we resist this
and there is still something of the
cultural attitude here of: Just tell me what I need to know. I might memorize
it or at least record it in my tablet, but not much else. Do not tell me crap I
don’t need to know to make me an authentic human person. Do not give me stuff
to read that will not advance my “skills” at priestcraft. That attitude must
change and it might change over my dead body but at least we will be moving in
the right direction. Second, you must be an instrument of reform for Catholic
education in your future parishes. We have to move toward a higher
understanding of education in Catholic schools and religious education
programs. We have to get more highly qualified teachers. We have to have
excellent facilities. We have to have a curriculum that focuses on the
development of the whole person, always within the context of faith. Finally,
we have to encourage our teachers to be well-developed disciples with
disciplined minds and we have to pay them a living wage. The reform of Catholic
education in our country must stand at the forefront of our priorities but
first we must be fully aware of what education is.
Finally we are told that the political system in
which we invest so much money and energy is working. Think of how much money is
flowing into the current circus we call the presidential campaign. How much
energy is the media giving to following this circus? I was thinking the other
day about what we are not getting in our news because all eyes and cameras are
focused upon Donald, Bernie, Hillary and the others. When I reflect upon the
condition of our election process, I have to admit that I am somewhat at a loss
as to how, concretely, we can make it better. I would offer these reflections
however. I believe that Catholics need to be very well-informed about the
various issues that relate to our future in this country. I believe Catholics
need to understand their own positions very well and I believe we have the
responsibility to bring Catholic ideals and Catholic values to bear upon the
election process. I also acknowledge that is a tall order and we are not
receiving very good direction at this point. Perhaps some of these issues may
unfold in the months to come. I do know this, whether we are talking about the
Saint Meinrad community or the larger electoral picture, we must become deeply
informed. Regardless of my critiques, I can tell you that I am not willing to
write off our social order, our culture. I believe in this country and I know
that this country can and should be great. It will only achieve its potential
however when it thinks profoundly about itself and what it represents. This is
a tall order, but we as leaders of the Church have to show our nation how great
then can be. We have to set the example in our seminary and in our parishes and
dioceses. We can change this country if we authentically represent the
teachings of the Church without apology and without compromise. We can change
the global condition of the Church if we learn to speak eloquently about the
situation of our fellow Christians around the world.
Increasing awareness
Increasing communications
Better eduction
Better reflection on the political order.
All of these concretely realized in the processes
of formation both inside and outside the seminary
I hope this little manifesto is at least a start
in offering some concrete reflections to my friendly little critic. Perhaps all
of this is best summarized by the quote of Mother Teresa which I offer all of
the time: You change the world by changing yourself. In other words we cannot
lament and moan as long as we remain unconverted.
