Catholicism, holiness and spirituality

Discerning God's Will

In the comments section of the Willpower post, Hector has proposed a great process for discerning God's will for us. It's good reading, and not just because he quotes me back to me, but because it just makes a lot of sense. But, feel free to give him your thoughts on it too.

Good or bad?

I've been pondering lately, about how some view people, or humanity in general as basically good, or basically bad. It was prompted by a comment in my Bible study group (a.k.a. Good ol' boys meeting) the other night - someone pretty much said that there was nothing good inside him except for what Jesus Christ brought into him. I don't agree with that at all, but I understand that people have different views on this, much of it depending on the tradition they came from. Such a view of human nature sounds Calvinist to me, or if one was Catholic we might call it Jansenist. Lucky for me that the Jesuits were around to engage the Jansenists, who were eventually smacked down by the pope. Then a later pope smacked down the Jesuits, but that's a different story.

And then I read something that feels related to this on Fr Rob Walsh's blog about differences between how Catholics and Protestants 'find God in the world':

It has been argued that there is a fundamental parting of the ways between Catholics and Protestants over just this issue. The Catholic imagination–wildly oversimplifying–tends to value the ways the creation can reflect, embody, and reveal God while the Protestant imagination tends to see God as sitting in judgement of just such practises.

What's the causality here? If we see people as basically good, or leaning towards good instead of bad, is that because of how we see God in the world? Or is it how we see human nature's basic inclination that affects how we see God in the world? Or maybe they are not related at all...

Some new Catholic blogs

Now & then I check out my blog stats and come across some new web logs. Here are some new ones I've come across lately - they are all worthwhile reading. I may have missed a couple - if so, please let me know; I don't intend to leave anyone out, but I also don't keep really good track of these things.

Call it either 'Beacon for Life' or 'Your Pastoral Coach', but under either title, Hector Muñoz shares his thoughts on applying Catholic faith and spirituality to leadership skills and life in general. He has a great background too, and I've found his blog to be a breath of fresh air.

Lisa, a mom of 6, blogs from Oklahoma (one of my former home-states) at the MySpirit blog. Since I was raised not too far away in Kansas, in a family of five boys, a lot of what she writes about strikes a familiar note with me. She had me hooked when she posted pictures of the kids sledding down the carpeted stairs.

And then there's Rob Marsh, SJ. He's a member of the British province, and works in retreats and spiritual direction at the Loyola Hall Jesuit Spirituality Center in the north of England. One day he's writing about cosmology, the rules of cricket and evolution in the context of theology, and the next it's about an obscure, dead programming language called Delphi. Now, that's eclectic. His blog is called All Things Seen and Unseen.

Not so new but still new-enough is Higher Plane. This former Peace Corps volunteer is now a flight attendant, writing under the pen name of Omis Dlaykadrinck, and considering a call to the priesthood. As a former airline employee myself, a not-so-former frequent flier, and a fellow Catholic I find a lot of good stuff on his blog. Very refreshing.

Crystal is not new to blogging (I miss her old blog), but she's now part of friendly skripture study - an online multidenominational Bible study group. Her most recent post mentions the Spiritual Exercises online retreat, which I am considering this year. OK, so this isn't strictly a Catholic blog, but I like it and it's a good one so it gets listed here.

And finally, Confessions of a Wayward Catholic. Jenn has recently returned to the church and writes from Los Angeles. She writes about her journey back to the church, some Merton, and various other interesting stuff she calls 'Uncategorized', with good photos too.

Oh, and then saintos at Luminous Miseries. He's not Catholic yet, but is on his way, along with the rest of his family. That's good enough to make this list too. He's an artist and now former Protestant associate pastor, writing from somewhere in Canada (that's a big 'somewhere').

Willpower

Ever have one of those moments when things don’t go your way in a relationship, a group, or a plan and you find yourself thinking: Hey! Wait a minute now, this isn’t what I signed up for! This isn’t what I expected at all, and I don’t like it.

Hmmm… let’s see… marriage, volunteer work, paid work, church, pets, kids’ activities – I’ve invested myself in each of those things expecting a certain outcome, and many times was disappointed when things didn’t go my way. They all start out with joyous fanfare, and we’re all feeling just swell and smiling from ear to ear. And then eventually things don’t go my way and I get disappointed. Hopefully, I learn to put my ego aside for the common good, realizing that what is best is not always what my ego desires. That’s what today’s scriptures remind me of.

Jeremiah felt duped – You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped (Jer 20:7-9). Paul urges us to sacrifice ourselves so that we can discern God’s will (Rom 12:1-2). Jesus rebukes Peter for putting his will ahead of God’s (Mt 16:21-27).

God is calling us to bigger and better things than we could ever achieve on our own, but to respond to that call we have to be willing to put our egos and selfishness aside, and stick with it. This is our human struggle, and it’s not easy. It’s not convenient, doesn’t always fit into our plans, and can cause all sorts of attention to be drawn towards us. It can be uncomfortable, awkward, and disheartening.

Still, I’m convinced that our deepest desires are to be with God. That desire is what keeps drawing us back to seek God’s will, to be with God. With God’s help, we can learn to find strength not in our own abilities but in the peace and love that flow from Christ in us.

Enlightening

Here are a couple quotes I found interesting in my book on church history. Just getting to the Enlightenment now...

The authority of the Sacred Scriptures has as its sole aim to convince men of those truths which are necessary for their salvation .... But that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and understanding should not wish us to use them and should desire to impart to us by another means knowledge which we have it in our power to acquire by their use - this is a thing which I do not think I am bound to believe.

Galileo

The mind can acquiesce in what it accepts as true. The heart can only love what seems good to it. Violence will turn a man into a hypocrite if he is weak and into a martyr if he is strong ... Teaching, persuasion and prayer, these are the only legitimate means of spreading the faith.

Diderot

Bible Study

This past Thursday night, I went to a Bible study. Jim @ Brainwaves invited me, and I'm glad he did. It was an interesting evening, on the patio in Larry's back yard. Clarence snapped a photo of me & Jim (we're in the second picture) as we were leaving. Jim and Clarence are the only two bloggers I've ever read who I have also met in person. It's good to talk real-time with folks who I had only previously known via web pages & emails.

I sort of stuck-out in the group of six guys there. They are all residents of Northern Kentucky, which while it is just across the river from Cincinnati, well... Kentucky is just different from Ohio. They all seemed like natives to me; I'm a transplant to Ohio, via Oklahoma and originally from Kansas, and I still don't quite fit into the Ohio/Cincinnati landscape. Those guys are Pentacostal Protestants, or at least tending towards a Pentacostal or Evangelical frame of thought. But I also learned they are not ones to simply walk & talk the 'party line.' I'm a cradle-Catholic, but I don't always walk & talk the party-line either.

It was interesting to see how the veneer of terminology affected the course of conversation. While there are philosophical and theological differences, in many ways, we just use different words to describe the same thing. But it takes open ears and a bit of time to get to that shared understanding. I think sometimes that is why various religious groups get antagonistic towards each other; understanding takes time and effort. It's much easier to slap a label on someone and move on. But in doing that, we lose out.

About half

At Mass this past Sunday, our priest spoke a bit about Pope John 23rd. He retold a quote from the pope that I had never heard, but that doesn't mean much. It made us all laugh:

One day Pope John 23rd was asked how many people work at the Vatican? His Holiness replied: "Oh, about half."

Provoking Jesuit Radio

The Jesuits are into a lot of things, and producing radio shows is one of them. One program is called Provoke, and is social-justice oriented. I don't know which stations broadcast it, but you can listen to the shows online. Fr Stephen Spahn, SJ is the host of this program, and is based in Washington DC.

The other Jesuit-produced show is Contact. This show has more general content, and you can listen to it online as well, though it seems to be broadcasted in a good number of states. Contact Radio is sponsored by the Missouri Jesuit Province.

Predicting Famine

In reading the Economist this week I came across an aritcle (Starving for the cameras)that mentioned the FEWS Net project - Famine Early Warning System NETWork. Funded by USAID, they monitor and try to predict which countries are most at risk of developing food crises, so that aid agencies can respond before the crisis comes along. It makes an awful lot of sense to me. But it's also sad that the world has been able to construct a process for determining when a country will encounter a famine crisis. It says volumes about our inability, or perhaps lack of will, to eliminate famine.

Here in the US, farmers don't have to worry about people stealing their livestock or the government or other military groups taking their land. There is a well organized market for their products, and supplies and seed are available as needed. All this stability over several decades has helped famers grow and become more productive. Countries in risk of famine have none of these advantages, so it's no wonder they often have a hard time feeding themselves. With a stable political system and organized markets, countries would be better euipped to withstand a drought now and then. But not when living on the edge.

The FEWS Network is admirable. They are trying to bring relief to people before a real crisis develops. But it puzzles me that we have such a need. We know what brings on famine, but relief often doesn't come until conditions are so bad that a storm of media attention brings it to our awareness. And though we know what causes famine, we have obviously been ineffective at curing the root of this problem.

Maturing in Faith

A story I read this morning about young adult Catholics finding new paths prompted me to reflect on my own young-adult period. At 39 years of age, I don't consider myself a young adult now, but I understand that is a relative term anyway. For me, young-adult is someone in their 20's.

In my 20's I eventually stopped attending church. The Catholic church just didn't seem to make sense to me any more. I found my time Sunday morning was better spent getting some fresh pastries from the bakery and reading the New York Times. Looking back now, both parishes I attended during my 20's were really good ones. But at the time, they just didn't make a connection with me.

Where I grew up, the Catholic schools had closed due to lack of enrollment. I attended public schools, which were good for the region. But pervading the schools and the society around me was at best an unspoken suspicion of Catholicism, and at worst an outright condemnation of it. From 1st through 8th grades I attended Sunday CCD (religious education) classes. I have no idea of the quality of that education, since I don't remember much about it and don't have anything to compare it to. The only book I remember from those classes is a children's version of the Baltimore Catechism.

But now, looking back, I have better perspective. Hindsight and all that, you know. The maturing process of my faith was cut short. Faith doesn't mature in 8th grade. My parents were raised in very Catholic environments and maybe they just figured I was going to pick it up via osmosis like they did. But the church at that time was going through its post-Vatican 2 identity crisis and could hardly take care of itself, so it was in no shape to nurture and guide me. And then school & society told me that my church was backwards and/or the anti-Christ.

Maturing in faith is supported by good catechesis & book knowledge, but that is definitely not the whole picture. So when I hear people wail and get angry about how poorly they were catechized in those post-Vatican 2 years, as if that's the sole cause of their drift, I'm a bit sceptical. I'm not denying that some catechesis was bad, but it can't be the one exclusive scapegoat for those of us who drifted from the church. The church environment and the Catholic culture around us, also nurtures our faith. And the maturing of our faith is nurtured by our parents, and it's unpleasant to admit when they may have fallen short at that aspect of their duties.

Knowledge, culture, and family life - maybe that's a three-legged stool model? Take one leg out and the stool falls over. Maturing in the faith requires good catechesis, a supportive church community/culture, and a family life that lives and reinforces those values.

I don't know, it sounds good to me, but what do you think?