Posted by april on August 10, 1999 at 08:02:35:
In Reply to: Formative Spirituality-a maslovian revolution in theology? posted by j sobert sylvest on August 08, 1999 at 10:55:13:
jboy wrote:
: 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.
Hi John,
I have enjoyed reading your verbal meanderings. I understand your need to
express yourself in this way.
I
: 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?
John, would you clarify? Are you talking about the Kingdom and Gehenna as states of consciousness or places? I've heard Gehenna described as an alienation of self....From the context, I tend to think you mean the traditional idea of places, correct?
: 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.
Much confusion. OK. I agree.
: 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.
....
:..... 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.
John, I'd like to interject something here...
Wm Johnston in "Mystical Theology,"says, "Peter Abelard was acutely aware of the paradoxes and apparent contradictions in Christian teaching. Always something of an enfant terrible, he wrote his Sic et Non to show how one hundred and fifty-eight propositions can at the same time be proved and disproved by arguments drawn from the Scriptures, the Fathers, the Councils and reason." (p. 32)
There are many apparent contradictions but woe to those who point them out! Look at what happened to poor Abelard!
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. .....
John, does this imply that one only enters the Kingdom by living what some would call the moral life? What about all the people living in
grey areas? For example, what about spies
who ply their favors in order to save thousands of lives? Moral or immoral? Where do they go?
We are not taking into account the lessons of developmental psychology and people's different stages of cognitive, moral, personality and faith development.
Yes. I think we have been teaching many things as being sinful when they have simply been part of the growth process.
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.
..as much medicine has focused on sickness instead of wellness and psychology on the abnormal instead of the normal and peak......
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.
Yes, however, I think we've also had some saints that were not what we would consider psychologically healthy.
: 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 it had a lot to do with the exclusion of the feminine and the overemphasis on the intellectual aspect of things.
: 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.
Indeed. I doubt that it ever did work. How can people love a God that is made to look like a meanacing bully? Fear, yes. Love, no.
John, I hope you encourage your children to question authority frequently and with passion.
I hope you show them that it is of the utmost importance for them to develop their intuition about things they are being taught. In that way, they will be able to internally separate the wheat from the chaff...with the help of their inner guidance and the grace of God. I also hope you help them realize that there's lots of pure garbage being promoted as Truth....and just because Teacher, Father or Sister or anyone else says it doesn't mean it's true.
You sound like a wonderful Dad, John. Probably the best thing you can do for your kids is live unconditional love with them each day in so far as that is possible. :):):) Then, they'll know experientially in a tiny way what God is really like......
Thanks for bearing with me.
Just adding my two cents.
Love,
april
P.S. In regards to your other post, I'd like to have dinner with you, Anne Ward, and Phil....pizza, ok? :):):)