Should the Roman Catholic Church disappear?

Let's face it. The catholic church, facing sex, fraud and embezzlement scandals, a declining membership and a lack of priests, certainly looks like it is dying. While the church itself is admitting and correcting its ways, it seems that true reform, the type that will bring the church in to the 21st century, is not about to happen. By this I mean opening up the priesthood to women and gays, increased involvement of the laity in financial affairs, and by making celibacy a personal election.

Despite the fact that other religions, including Christian based ones are growing and don't seem to have any problems at all in finding ministers, the church is not really looking inward. My own feeling is that there is not much to offer humanity in the way of spiritual growth and direction. Instead there are messages of God's love and an emphasis on the eucharistic celebration (not a bad thing) which in part is like giving people a "quick fix". In many ways, the reduced spirituality of the standard liturgy has turned catholicism into the McChurch.

Of course you can lead horses to water but can't make them drink, but this flies in the face of the growth in other spiritual movements, and the growing segment of spiritually-oriented books sold like the million seller, The Power of Now. The gap, it seems, comes from self-inflicted damage. Consider the fact that people are searching more than ever for a way to get closer to God (whether or not they realize it or not), and the catholic church is failing to provide leadership in spiritual ministry.

The church might very well be trying to be too universal in its approach to make cultural accommodations, and at the same time having too many expectations about the faith of followers. It is not a question of lack of faith but rather the leap of faith that the church asks for that renders the message meaningless for so many people. What people really want is the spiritual experience. And other than the eucharist, which for many people has no meaning whatsoever, is probably the only spiritual experience to be had in a church.

For me, a latecomer to religion and spirituality, the value of the catholic church lies elsewhere. The first the meaning of the word "catholic" is no "follower of the roman or eastern catholic churches", but one of the universality of interpretive belief. To be catholic is not to belong to a religion but to accept the universality of spirituality itself, in all of its forms. It is not a question of the universality of the message of Christ the Savior, but really something that is inverted. This is to admit that the catholic church does not have the exclusive rights to the way of knowing the will of God, but to embrace all other paths to God. This is what it is to be catholic.

I have been thinking that the mission of expansion in the Petrine and Pauline sense is an era that is over, and now the church must move to a more spiritual vocation. This is so obvious by the number of people who call themselves "spiritual" without professing a faith according to an organized religion. The real value of the church in this regard is that there is a rich tradition of diversity and deeper spirituality within the church itself, even for lay people, but it is up to the individual movements and orders to promote themselves. Try and get some spiritual direction through a local diocese to see what I mean. They can inform you about orders and movements and send you to them, but they can't provide it themselves.

The other is that there is value in apostolic succession, in that the unbroken line of ordainment going back to the original apostles, is a stronger metaphysics than those of the "prophetic" or "messianic" flavors of Christianity. This is not meant to deny or judge negatively the prophecies that have founded other movements, as they command a very deep respect and do represent spiritual truths.

Postmodernism and Spirituality: An Introduction

Some people might think that "spirituality" and "postmodernism" are totally incompatible concepts. Postmodernists on the one hand seem to be strictly atheist and even out to prove that God does not exist. On the other hand, many religions, Roman Catholic thinkers in particular, have traditionally been outspoken in their opposition to the relativism and anti-foundationalism that is a primary characteristic of postmodernism.

What is fascinating is that both points of view (foundation in God or a higher being or creator, and the relative nature of truth) are both without any way to dispute them. I am going to agree with the postmodernists here and say that everything that we perceive and say or agree on is relative. This is because we simply don't have access to any sort of evidence that is independent from our limited ability to perceive and express our perceptions through language and art. This is not to say that there isn't a reality independent from our experience, but that we are trapped in our bodies and can only confirm our findings with other people who are trapped in their bodies. So everything out there may exist, and things may be the way they really are, but we can't be so cocksure of ourselves when we say some thing or some belief is true or not. We just don't have access to an independent point of view to say who is right or who is wrong.

From a theological perspective, this is huge. And for many, this is the reason why there is a massive rejection of religion, or why religion has turned on itself or its members (I'm thinking of the Roman Catholic church here), or why people turn to spiritual beliefs that better reflect the current conception of reality. Basically religious dogma, which tends to be fixed, goes against a very simple fact that the way we conceptualize our existence, including our conceptual definitions, evolve and even radically change over time. In fact, religious dogma is no different from any other conceptual scheme, in that it must evolve, or it will become extinct.

Note that this is not a traditional war between scientific belief and metaphysical belief as taking precedent. I think we have moved beyond that debate, especially since the emergence of and the acceptance of philosophy of science as a legitimate critique. What philosophy of science has shown, over and over again, that even scientific thinking has a basis in metaphysical beliefs, or beliefs that just have to be believed. Nor is this a debate between logic and emotion, as we have evolved sufficiently enough to know that our emotions color just about everything we experience, say or do.

Actually from a theological perspective this is a debate over defining "right" vs. "wrong", in other words an ethical issue. And how theologians basically try and salvage the value of religious dogma to guide us in our behavior, whether from a human social or biological or planetary awareness perspective. So basically religion has been de-contented down to a set of guidelines for living and behaving, an interpretive text that is somehow universal and applicable to the post-modern condition. This is obvious in the western attraction to Buddhism, the re-emergence of judaic mysticism, not to mention the incredible growth of Islam throughout the world.

Basically as humans we don't have a roadmap, and haven't got a clue about what we are supposed to do, how we are supposed to act, and what we are supposed to believe. So we turn to ancient wisdoms, some of which are very explicit, and some that are not explicit at all, and we marvel at how "universal" they seem in the current context. And we follow them.

Stay tuned for the next installment, which might be surprising for some readers.

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