James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, can be ordered directly from Winepress Publishers — 1-877-421-READ (7323); $12.95, plus S&H. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at jkfitz42@aol.com.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
I also disappoint some people when I mention to them that I find much to admire in the writings of Teilhard de Chardin, a fact that no doubt comes through in my new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church. They insist that I am being naïve and overly willing to give Teilhard the benefit of the doubt. I admit: they could be right.
But I also get criticized by Catholics on the left who argue that I am closed-minded and overly suspicious of the motives of “progressive” Catholics who seek to interpret the Bible and Catholic teachings in order to make them “relevant” to the modern world. They also could be right. But I don’t think so. I think my suspicions of those who seek to “update” Catholicism are well founded and reasoned. There are atheists who call themselves Catholics. I know that.
How do I know that? Because I know some — people who will admit that they do not believe in a personal, loving Creator; that their understanding of “God” is indistinguishable from that of the “God is dead” theorists. For them, “God” exists only in our minds, as an ideal that promotes a drive to perfect their humanity, as a template of sorts.
Who are these people? Are they familiar names? No. The familiar names do not usually say these things openly. To do so would bump them from their spot on the Catholic soapbox. Catholics will listen to the theories of unconventional theologians, but not to those who freely admit to being in conflict with central tenets of the Faith. The way certain updating theologians use the term “immanence” is an example of what I mean. They leave themselves wiggle room.
When they use this term, do they mean that the spirit of God that dwells within us is the only place that God exists; that there is no God the Father, who art in Heaven, who gives us our daily bread and forgives us our trespasses? More to the point: Are they seeking to preach their secular humanism by disguising it in language that will seem unthreatening to practicing Catholics? Or are they searching in good faith for a way to express to the modern world what Catholics have always meant by the infusion of the Holy Spirit into our souls through God’s grace? Often, it is hard to tell.
Here is another example. In the April 8-15 issue of the Jesuits’ America magazine, there is a review of a new book entitled Thirty Days: On Retreat with the Exercises of St. Ignatius. The author is Paul Mariani, a poet, literary critic and holder of an endowed chair in the English department of Boston College. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius is the book upon which the traditional Jesuit spiritual retreats are conducted at many of the order’s retreat houses. I have never made one of those retreats, but I have read and prayed A Do-It-at-Home Retreat by Andre Ravier, S.J., a book based on the Spritual Exercises. I found it effective and spiritually enriching.
I have not read Mariani’s book, but I might. It sounds interesting. What I am interested in just now does not require a complete reading of the book. The America review will suffice, specifically the following quotation, where Mariani writes of one of his goals when making a retreat recently at the Gonzaga Retreat House in Massachusetts: “I’ve been trying to answer the question asked Peter, and now seems to be asking me. Who do you say I am? One thing is clear. I’ve been trying to do with Jesus what I’ve done as a biographer with the lives of others: discover who the real Jesus is. But the mistake is to fully equate the real Jesus with the historical Jesus.”
What does he mean by the “real” Jesus? He speaks of “the Christ of the Resurrection, transformed and transforming, the one who acts upon me and remakes the questioner, the pilgrim, the seeker. It is this Jesus I have spent these past weeks trying to approach. Isn’t it true that – at the most unexpected moments – I have been touched by this Jesus…? I don’t think I’m afraid of being touched, though I see now that I have used words as much to hide from Him as to find Him. All I can really do at this point is wait for Him to reveal himself in His own good time.”
Nothing wrong with that. For all I know, Mariani may be very orthodox in his views. But, here’s my problem. Why contrast this “real” Jesus with the “historical” Jesus? The “historical Jesus” is the Jesus of the Scriptures, born of the Virgin Mary, who performed miracles, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried, and who descended into Hell and rose again on the third day, then ascended into Heaven, where He sits at the right hand of the Father. Mariani asks the question: “Who do you say that I am?” The Gospels answer that question.
If you ignore the Jesus of the Gospels in pursuit of the “real” Jesus, are you looking for an intense personal encounter with the risen Christ, a spiritual experience comparable to what Protestants call being “born again”? Or are you looking instead for something manipulable that will enable you to follow the dictates of your conscience without regard to the teachings of Jesus found in the Bible and articulated by the Church? That is not what Jesus requires of a follower: “He who does not take up his cross and follow me, is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake, will find it” (Mt. 10:38-39).
The Jesus of the Gospels does not instruct us to feel good about ourselves, be true to yourself, to do your own thing, to march to the beat of a different drummer: “Do you think that I came to give peace upon the earth? No, I tell you, but division. For henceforth in one house five will be divided, three against two, and two against three. They will be divided, father against his son, and son against his father; mother against daughter and daughter against the mother” (Luke 12:51-53).
To be blunt, the Jesus of the Gospels does not permit an individual to sit in a quiet place, even a retreat house, and wait for a “real” Jesus” who will, in Mariani’s words, “reveal himself in His own good time.” The “real” Jesus will not reveal himself by sanctioning a personal and subjective code of conduct in conflict with the words of the Jesus of the Gospels and the Magisterium of the Church.
