Being a Catholic in Today’s Culture

Fig trees. Mustard Seeds. Riding a donkey. Facing the Pharisees and Sadducees. It was things and situations like these that Jesus used to get people’s attention so he could reveal to them the wondrous salvific work of God that was taking place in and through him. At first, the people of his time didn’t recognize who he was. Things got even worse when he was brutally crucified. But then he rose from the dead and sent his Spirit to his people and into the world. In the light of Easter and Pentecost they began to see more clearly, to understand and interpret, to make sense of who Jesus was and what he taught.

They talked to one another, questioned one another, even argued with one another, over who Jesus was and what he meant. Little by little they developed a variety of versions of Christ and the one Gospel, the one Good News of salvation, and they wrote those versions down. Four of those versions gained special prominence and in the 4^th century, (Council of Hippo, 393; Council of Carthage, 397) the Christian leaders confirmed them as the true and authentic versions of the one Gospel of Christ. In and through Jesus Christ, God had revealed Himself to His people and the people had received that revelation, generated a consensus and created the Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

In this history, we see the truth that Vatican II reconfirmed, namely, that church leaders do not get the truth directly or exclusively from God. The whole people receive it and the leaders discern and gather up the consensus of the faith of the whole people, (the consensus fidei) and then they authoritatively teach what the whole people already believe.

The validity of that process never changed. Today, we are called by God to see anew and make sense of who Christ was and what he meant, in our own way, in and for our own culture. And our church leaders have to discern and gather up what the whole people already believe. We are called to create a 21^st century, American version of the Gospel.

We still have fig trees and mustard seeds but we also have global warming. We don’t ride donkeys but we have American automobiles, whose producers are going bankrupt. We don’t face Pharisees and Sadducees but we face fundamentalist Christians. Jesus had to deal with money changers; we have credit swaps, bad mortgages and poverty and economic injustice.

Jesus was involved in his culture. We are called to get involved in ours. Let’s look at our culture. On one hand, we have a strong sense of individual freedom and dignity, youthful energy and vision, ingenuity and optimism, a history of generosity and a basic sense of fair play. On the other hand, we have excessive individualism, greed, political extremism, drugs, two wars, torture, health care problems, abortion, etc., etc.

This is our culture—noisy and fast-changing—within which we have to find what T. S. Eliot called the “still point of the turning world,” where we will meet the indwelling Spirit of Christ and make sense of our culture with the eyes, mind and heart of Christ. In sum, we have to create a 21^st century American understanding and expression of Christ, or as I said before, a 21^st century, American version of the Gospel. How do we do that?

First and foremost, let’s remind ourselves of who we are. We are the people of God, in whom the Spirit of Christ dwells. We live, here and now, not us, but Christ lives in us, here and now. We are American citizens who are 21^st century, American expressions of Jesus Christ. Everything that Jesus was, we now exemplify and express in today’s terms. It is our calling, our vocation, to constantly open the eyes, heart and mind of our American society and culture to the creativity, healing and world transforming love of Christ himself—in a real sense, to bring forth the American features of the beautiful face of Christ. How do we do that? We do it by being the everyday mystics and prophets that we are.

A mystic is someone who can see what is hidden. As the everyday mystics we are, we are gifted by the Holy Spirit of Christ with the ability to personally discern the Spirit’s presence within us and our society, and to understand and interpret what the Spirit intends for ourselves and our society. As baptized Christians, each one of us is personally receiving the revelation of God. It is the same revelation that the first century Christians received, but we receive it in our own language and in our own personal and cultural context.

In theology, our ability to receive God’s revelation is called the sensus fidei. The sensus fidei is our sense, our instinct, we could say, our taste, of revelation that arises our being contemporary expressions of Christ. We experience it in the salvific progress of our own lives. In looking inward at our own conversions and growth in Christ we see the ongoing conversion and growth of our society and world. And in that light, we are able to discover the unfolding meaning of revelation for ourselves and our society. Where has our culture been converted? Where has it grown in humanity and humanness? Where and how does it need to be converted and to grow now? Our sensus fidei makes us able to read the signs of the times and to be creative and adaptive in bringing our faith into new situations. It makes us more insightful as to what is true and what is false. It opens us to listen to others and to formulate a consensus of the faith (consensus fidelium) which generates the teaching of the church.

As everyday prophets we are called to put into practice what we discern, understand and interpret. The Spirit of Christ within us is actually God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the grace of Christ, like God our Creator, we are creative; like God, the Son, we are salvific healers; life God the Holy Spirit, we bring world-transforming love to our society. As everyday prophets, therefore, we bring God’s creativity, healing and world-transforming love to our schools, businesses, corporations, government, health-care services, science and art. Those of us who are in these fields have special gifts from the Holy Spirit to be especially effective there. In sum, if we want to know what kind of everyday mystics and prophets we are, we can look at the way we’re living, at how we’re engaged in our own families, communities and society.

As Vatican II points out, the Spirit of God fills the whole world. We don’t have to bring Christ to our culture. He is already there, waiting for us. He is already in our schools, our politics, our corporations, etc., offering them his salvific creativity, healing and transforming love. Unhappily, he is also there being crucified in so many ways. We get involved in the institutions of our society to help bring his saving presence there to greater fruition.

Certainly, we are not there to force our religion on them. In the Spirit of Christ, our job is to put our faith—Christ’s saving work—into language and action that is understandable, plausible and acceptable to our fellow Americans, in order to help them and our institutions become more fully and luminously human. We believe that the true way to be more fully and luminously human is to be more creative, healing and loving, i.e., more like the image of God. It is to be and active part of the salvific fulfillment of creation itself. We believe that all this is done only by receiving and applying the grace of Christ. Thus, to paraphrase St. Iraneus, “The glory of God is the American people and culture fully and luminously alive!”

Now, getting deeply involved in our culture presents a great challenge. It is the genius of Christianity that it can take form in any culture of the world, in any time of history—just as it did in the Palestinian culture at the time of Jesus. But we just heard of the horrific sexual abuse of children in Ireland. The Catholic institutions who were guilty of those sins and crimes did those terrible things not because they were Catholic, but because they had over-identified with Irish culture—with an especially virulent strain of Irish culture, and because they were trapped in the church’s imperial clerical culture that could not admit it did anything wrong. The church’s imperial culture is also part of our own country’s sad record of the hierarchy’s cover-up of sex abuse of children by some priests. In another area where we over-identified with our culture, Catholic schools in the South were segregated until the 1950’s. On the other hand, in the 1980’s the American bishops wrote outstanding documents on our American economy and on peace. Today we can ask and discuss: How effective is the church’s approach to the abortion tragedy.

Every culture is infected with a corrosive influence that militates against the creative, healing and loving grace within it. It pulls us toward egotism and pathological individualism, greed, and all the other forms of corruption that darken the light of Christ in society. This corrosive influence is what Jesus called, “the sin of the world,” which he said hates him but which he has overcome. It exists in every individual and in every institution, including the church.

So, to “avoid the world,” does not mean not getting involved in our culture. Vatican II spoke very strongly against those who separate their faith from their involvement in our world. It means we have to get involved with special care. Where necessary, we must reshape our institutions, crucify them with their own particular Good Friday, in order to bring them to the Easter Sunday and Pentecost of their fullest possible growth and development, e.g., more integrated and integrating curricula and teaching methods in our public schools, better business practices, better political and cultural promotion of the common good, with a preferential option for the poor and vulnerable, etc.

We must touch our institutions in the way a physician touches sick people, touching and treating them without getting infected by the disease that is present within them. Inevitably, we ourselves will be crucified as we touch our society, e.g., loss of jobs and the need to be re-educated and re-trained, higher taxes. We have to suffer our crucifixion without being defeated by the corrosive influence that is crucifying us. This calls for adult Christians who live and act with deep spiritual knowledge and maturity.

So first, we have to look to ourselves. Are we informed enough and mature enough to be the expressions of Christ that we are in our society and culture? If not, why not? How often do we see senators and representatives at hearings asking shallow, self-serving questions? How many are Catholics? Do they really not know what to do? If not, why

not? If so, why aren’t they doing it? How many Catholic traders worked for AIG and didn’t know what to do? How many Catholics gave bad mortgage loans or designed cars that wouldn’t sell, and didn’t know what to do? How many Catholics are involved in our public schools or are health providers and don’t know what to do?

As I said, Vatican II told us to get involved in our culture. If I can sum up the council’s message to us in two words, they are “Grow up.” It is time for every Catholic to grow up spiritually—mystically and prophetically—and take full part in doing the work of Christ in our society and world.

Now, the fact that each of us personally receives the revelation of God doesn’t mean that each of us in infallibly correct. So we must look within ourselves and to others.

First, each one of us discerns according to our age, race, culture, personality type, educational and professional context, social and sub-cultural environment, etc. So it’s important that we know ourselves well so we can “distill out” the pure revelation that is coming to us.

Second, there are personal “spiritual markers” to help us. Does what we discern and act upon make us more true to the faith, more fair and just, more truthful, pure and direct, more peaceful and humble, more open and respectful of others, more one with the whole people of God, more open and willing and less willful, more respectful of nature, more imbued with a sense of service, more hopeful, joyful, grateful, worshipful and charitable?

Third, our personal reception of revelation moves us to engage in a lively conversation with all other members of the people of God—with the rest of the laity, especially with those in our own field of work or profession, with spiritual friends and counselors, with

the insights of theologians and educators, and with the leadership of our bishops and pope. We have 2000 years of faith experience to fall back on.

The conversation should also include the disillusioned and disaffected Catholics, and members of other faiths.

What we all discern together must be listened to, respected, gathered up, clarified and finally accepted, taught and applied in our everyday lives.

God so loved the world that he gave His only Son to save it. Our work is the work of Christ’s love—his self-giving, all embracing charity—for us, our society and culture, and for the whole world. One day, nobody knows when, Christ will return. On that day, he will gather up all the charity we have created, in and through his grace, throughout our lifetimes—within ourselves, with others and within our culture. The extent and intensity of that charity will be the measure of our part in the fulfillment of creation and of the glory which we gratefully and worshipfully return to God, our Father/Creator. In the Spirit of Christ, our charity will also be the measure of glory that we give to Christ. To him be all honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.

June 14, 2009

Dr. Anthony T. Massimini has a Ph. D. in Spirituality; now living in New Jersey, was a priest (dispensed 1971 by Pope Paul VI) and attended the first session of Vatican II. He was a psychotherapist and faculty member at Th. Jefferson Medical University, and later at CATCH Community Mental Health Center in Philadelphia. He lives with his wife, Mary in New Jersey.

He is the author of The New Dance of Christ--Discovering our Spiritual Self in a New, Evolving World which is available at www.amazon.com