Posted by j sobert sylvest on August 08, 1999 at 10:55:13:
On the Difficulty of Entering the Kingdom and the Ease of Being Cast Into Gehenna
Coming up with the title of this essay was easy. Coming up with the words to articulate the deep-seated intuition that I'd like to share with you is a challenge. Who is my audience? How might I best reach them? What are my qualifications to speak authoritatively on the matter anyway? Can I avoid using a lot of big words? Should this be a short essay with no references cited or rather a short book extensively footnoted? These questions and others have plagued me for some time and I have put-off this consideration for lack of any suitable answers.
So, I sit here and stare at the blank screen and as I write I am telling myself that this missive will merely be a proposal for a thesis or dissertation or book that someone else might write. This will free me to get on with the major thrust of my message without worrying about developing its historical background , defining its psychological undergirdings or defending its theological formulations. Why don't I just wait and do this right? Well, sometimes I get a sense of urgency about a message, an inexplicable driveness to say something such that I might not even remotely risk the possibility of dying leaving it unsaid. More than anything else, this is something I'd like to share with my children.
With all that said, I'll get to the point.
Is it difficult to enter the Kingdom? Is it easy to be cast into Gehenna?
For starters, how would you answer these questions? Think about your childhood upbringing and what you were taught. Think of the people who taught you: parents, teachers, catechists, religious, clergy and others. Think of the attitudes that you formed in response to these teachings and the behaviors you acted out as a result. Think of the homilies and sermons you heard, of the books you've read, of all the media which delivered you messages regarding your purpose on earth and your destiny hereafter.
It is my thesis that there is much confusion surrounding the most important issues in our lives, those issues which involve our origin, our ground of being, our means of support and finally, our destiny. It is also my belief that this confusion results moreso from the latent ambiguities and simple misunderstandings surrounding the issues themselves, and only to a lesser extent from human malice in the guise of arrogance, manipulation and control.
Why the confusion? Whenceforth the ambiguities and misunderstandings?
The problem, as I see it, in a nutshell, has a lot to do with flawed communications resulting from seriously flawed pedagogy. Simply stated, many of us have been taught the "right" things in the wrong way.
Right away, I am somewhat handicapped because I have no background in education and I have a writing style that resonantes with a few but which leaves the many scratching their heads. I have no training in theological methods but I have a rudimentary grasp of Karl Rahner's anthropological approach which influences me here. I had quite a bit of schooling in psychology but no practical experience in the counseling professions. I am conversant but not at all proficient with much of the psychology and theology involved in this consideration and I am a total outsider when it comes to any critique of educational methods. Perhaps my strength precisely comes from being a parent and somewhat of an outsider and, if the reader works with me in an earnest attempt to read between the lines, to overcome my own flawed pedagogy, to struggle with our collective confusion and misuderstandings, then we might together triumph over the ambiguities which I stand poised to attack.
Is it difficult to enter the Kingdom? Is it easy to be cast into Gehenna?
So, what are the right things which have been taught in the wrong way?
Well, it IS difficult to enter the Kingdom and it IS easy to be cast into Gehenna. And, by the way, don't forget, God DOES love you unconditionally. Remember, too, there is NO salvation outside the church!
I could construct a long litany of platitudes and bromides, scripture and catechism quotes, aphorisms and catch-phrases, all concisely and succinctly setting forth most of the codified imperatives and injunctives of our time-honored Christian religions and traditions. For the trained theologian and the properly schooled catechist there would be very little in that litany which would appear to be in apparent contradiction. For the properly initiated, there would be no trace of the cognitive dissonance which would leave others dizzy with spiritual vertigo.
The fact of the matter is our world religions have profound depth. There is a mystical core of all organized religions and the authentic practitioners and mystics of these religions which go deeply enough into their own traditions (existentially and not merely academically) find a common rootedness, but it is a rootedness that almost defies articulation, coming from a contact with Reality that is mostly ineffable. At the same time and on the other end of the faith experience spectrum, there is interreligious dialogue and, strangely enough to the casual observer, despite the tangible experience of their common rootedness, none of these dialogue participants advocate any syncretism or suggest a pluralstic universalism. Most of these participants, though, have profoundly influenced their own traditions and with glacial-like progress, the world's religions are moving away from their exclusivistic ecclesiocentrisms to more inclusivistic anthropocentrisms and theocentrisms. Mindful of the respect they have for their atheistic and agnostic sisters and brothers, the dialogue participants often begin discussions at the level of exploration of a global ethic.
It is this depth which we must respect even if we are not all called to consciously explore it. Rahner was in touch with humanity's origins, biological and social. He was also in touch with the divine communication. His Christology gave birth to an ecclesiology which found its way into Vatican II and which resulted in an almost copernican turn from exclusivistic ecclesiocentrism to an inclusivistic Christocentrism. Salvation History began with the first ensoulment of the first human and reached its zenith in the hypostatic union pointed to in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New. Rahner placed us all in touch with the salvific efficacies of not only the nonCatholic Christian religions but also of the nonChristian traditions, and this provides much of the foundation for our present day understanding of how, through implicit faith, every man, woman and child might enter the Kingdom by living the moral life. So, as to whether or not there is no salvation outside the Church, the statement can be true and can even be an assertion of profound optimism for all of humanity through all of the ages, if our ecclesiologies are heavily nuanced, if our definitions are artfully constructed, if our divine communications get re-communicated intact. And those "if's" my sisters and brothers are at the heart of my consideration here.
The articles of faith are heavily nuanced and the definitions of our catechisms and codifications are artfully constructed. Our twentieth century theological methods are the the Hubble telescope enlightening our visions of Heaven and our refined philosophical frameworks are the electron microscope peering into the recesses of our capacious souls which are yearning to be filled with an utter fullness. Still, the nuances and definitions need explication, the catechisms and codifications need to be subjected to critical and historical methods and proper exegesis and then restated, not for the theolgians but for the masses.
Quite frankly, we have been reaching out to people with the Truth but have been delivering Falsehood. We are meaning one thing when we talk but we are saying something entirely different. We are blithely ignoring our cultural conditionings, social milieus, historicities, language barriers, nuanced definitions, influences of mass media and a host of other factors bearing on what is necessary for the successful communication of the Gospel. We are not taking into account the lessons of developmental psychology and people's different stages of cognitive, moral, personality and faith development.
We are only now developing the field of formative spirituality as a true art and a true science and until it becomes more prominent, we will remain oblivious to the valid lessons buried deep beneath the surface of our tradition of mystical-ascetical theology. How counterintuitive the suggestion that we should subsume mystical theology under the general category of moral theology! But this is entirely proper. Moral theology is nothing more than the study of how our faith should inform our actions. For too long it has been an unbalanaced study, focusing on the sickness of the soul and the codification of immoral behaviors. The relatively recent re-advent of formative spirituality as an academic discipline within our schools of theology is the historical equivalent of the maslovian revolution in psychology whereby Abraham Maslow turned the focus of psychology, as an academic discipline exclusively devoted to the study of mental illness, to one also concerned with mental health. Certainly, we as a Church have never been without our study of "peak experiencers" and "self-actualized" individuals inasmuch as we have a diverse and rich hagiographical tradition; Maslow had his "Who's Who?" of psychological health and we've had our saints.
Somewhere along the way though, there has been a serious disconnect.
How could an obsession with manualism, sexual sin, ritualistic scruples, etc ever come to be emphasized over a more healthy focus on the study of spirituality, meditation and contemplation? I think the answer in large part is the clericalism which grew through time, contemporaneous with the deterioration of doctrine into dogmatism, liturgy into ritualism, and beatitude into legalism. In this dysfunctional system, the saints were there to intercede but certainly the laity would not presume to emulate them! The way to heaven was most sure for the priest, problematical enough for religious, an arduous path for the married and you single people remain in as much trouble now as you've ever been as regard securing your salvation!
What are the lessons of formative spirituality, of developmental psychology? How do we decode these manualistic codifications? How do we translate the nuanced language and redefine the lexicon? We need help!
We have a Helper!
The more I have delved into formative spirituality, the more optimistic I get. The more I read the theologians regarding the salvific efficacies of implicit faith, the more heartened I am with the opportunities ahead for the evangelization of the world with our explicit faith. The more I am aided in prayer by The Helper, the holy Spirit, the more I believe this same Spirit is forming upright and mature consciences, writing the law of Love on the hearts of every human being through a divine communication that is ever so sublime.
The more I encounter social sin, the more I witness social grace. The more I think about apokatastasis, the more it seems to me that all may be saved. Hell remains a theoretical possibility but not quite a serious probability. The manifold (but not heavily documented) ways of being exculpable as regards serious sin are far more probable in the life of a human being than the heavily documented, manifold codifed ways of being guilty before one's Maker.
I've come full circle to suggest that we have been in serious error to teach children about Hell and mortal sin. The more I have prayed over and studied authentic church teachings, the more I have given obsequium and assent and deference to Church teaching, the more I appreciate and understand why we believe as we do. At the same time, I have become more impressed with the esoterica versus what should be exoteric; I have become aware of the heavily nuanced and carefully defined objects of belief. These all suggest that the Kingdom is now and is to come. It is a difficult matter to enter fully into the Kingdom now and to trod the purgative and illuminative paths toward the unitive way but that doesn't mean you aren't already saved or justified. It is easy to be cast into Gehenna IF you meet what are some onerous criteria and can not be found exculpable due to any of a plethora of reasons ranging from ignorance and poor formation to mental illness and derangement. The preponderance of venial versus true mortal sin has got to be so heavily weighted in the favor of that which is venial versus that which is mortal, so heavily skewed in favor of the lessor offense versus the graver offense, that I've seriously considered reprogramming my children regarding that aspect of our catechesis. Oh, I've heard all the arguments and counterarguments about the efficacy of motivating people through fear, especially as regards a matter of such moment as one's eternal destiny. And sure, untold adults operate at very early stages of Kohlberg's levels of moral development and thus one could argue for the developmental appropriateness of the fear-mongering approach to religion. But guess what? It ain't working.
I wonder what would happen to our children if we restricted our catechesis to the teaching of unconditional love and the efficacies that flow therefrom? I wonder if they could be moved to repentance out of love? I wonder if they would contemplate to attain love? I wonder if we should mention hell and mortal sin only in the footnotes of 3rd year Moral Theology and then, only as theoretical possibilities necessitated by the gift of a free will by God to humanity? I wonder if we might better teach universal salvation as a far likelier probability and if we ought to teach it, therefore, far more prominently? I wonder if the academic pendulum should swing and formative spirituality and mystical theology should be prerequisites for classical moral theology?
I wonder about this a lot and I think I'm going to go tell my own children, right now, that there ain't no hell and, if there was, there ain't a snowball's chance in Geheena that they could commit a mortal sin and end up there even if there was! Now you and I both know this wouldn't be "theologically correct" but I'd be meaning one thing even if I was saying something entirely different and I'm sure that our Helper, the holy Spirit, would help them get the true meaning. Sure, it may be a flawed pedagogy but I'd bet it would get them a lot closer to the truth than the Baltimore Catechism ever got me!
What's a poor parent to do while waiting for " ecclesia semper reformada"?