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The difference between faith and belief.

"I do believe; help my unbelief!" -- Mark 9:24

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Darwin excerpts a cordial discussion between some theists and some atheists about the meaning of the word "faith."

 It's worth reading on its own, and I am not going to respond to the entire excerpt, but just make my own comment and expand on it here.

Some proposed definitions from the excerpt:

• "Faith is knowing by testimony rather than by experience. I believe that the Earth orbits the Sun, because the scientists tell me so, and I believe them. "
• "[F]aith is what fills in the gaps of the probabilities. If, say there is a 70 % probability something is the case then to conclude more than that 70% probability is faith..."

Darwin chimes in to make two points.  First, what "faith" originally means:  

The old Catholic Encyclopedia in its article on faith describes the Old Testament use of the term to be essentially "trustfulness" or "steadfastness".... This usage still informs the way that we use the term in reference to interpersonal relationships. I have faith that my wife loves me. She has faith that I am faithful to her. Etc. 

Second, 

faith is an act of the will.

Darwin's points are both correct, but he does not go as far as I do.  He classifies "faith" as being an act, and this is correct; but it seems that he identifies it too much with "belief," or with being convinced "enough" of something.  Here is the statement of Darwin's that I disagree with:

This usage still informs the way that we use the term in reference to interpersonal relationships. I have faith that my wife loves me. She has faith that I am faithful to her. Etc. 

Obviously, in this sense one can have faith in any number of things or people, and as it notes, faith in this sense necessarily presupposes belief. I can hardly have faith in my wife's love (as in, trust in its existence and steadfastness) if I don't really believe that I have a wife or don't really believe that she loves me. When Christians talk about "having faith" however, they're pretty specifically talking about "having faith in God" -- that combination of believing in God's existence and of trusting in God to remain steadfast and trustworthy in His love for us.

Darwin is failing -- at least clearly -- to make a distinction between "I am faithful to my wife" and "I have faith in my wife."

The first is concrete.  The second is the metaphor.

The faith that Christians are supposed to have is not the same thing as trust that God's love exists and is steadfast to us.  The faith that we are supposed to have, I am certain, is faithfulness *to* God -- fidelity to the laws and precepts that He sets out for us insofar as we are aware of them.  When we are told to have faith,  this is not at all a command to believe something.  (How can you be commanded to be convinced of a truth?) It is a command to do  something:  to live your life, in your body, in your mind, in accord with the will of a God.

Faith is not trust in God's steadfastness; it is a firm determination to remain steadfast to God.  It is as the original Hebrew meant.

And the point that I want to make, the point where I disagree with Darwin, is that faith understood in this way does not presuppose belief.  

Faith understood the way (I think) Darwin is trying to understand this would presuppose belief, because he is identifying faith with belief.  "I can hardly have faith in my wife's love if I don't really believe that she loves me."  Well, of course, if "faith in my wife's love" == "belief that my wife loves me."  

But my understanding of faith does not presuppose belief.  Darwin could choose to remain faithful to his wife -- by which I mean nothing more nor less than the earthy sort of "faithful," i.e., he could remain sexually faithful to his wife, forsaking all others, and not abandoning her or their children -- even if he lost all confidence in her love for him.  Indeed, he could (and should) choose to remain sexually faithful if Darwin became thoroughly convinced that MrsDarwin did not love him at all.

And what if he did not believe that he even had a wife?  Well, millions of still-single people find themselves in that situation every day, not having promised marriage to anyone, and yet they can still be "faithful" to the future spouse they might or might not have by living a chaste life.  Such is faith:  steadfastness.

One may be "faithful" while having severely impaired belief, even no belief at all. (Which raises the question:  Why would someone who did not believe in God ever strive to live according to God's laws?  I will not answer the question here, and maybe will bat that question back to Darwin, but I will simply note that it is not logically impossible to be faithful in this way without belief; whereas if faith == belief, it does become logically impossible to have faith without belief.)

The idea of "faith" as a purely mental or spiritual assent to a theological statement is, I suspect, a highly Protestant innovation.  Because if you understand "faith" to mean "faithfulness" or "fidelity," then there is no distinction, none at all, between faith and works.  The whole concept of "faith vs. works" presupposes that it is even possible to segregate a thing called "faith" away from the daily acts of living and interacting with other human beings and with our God.  I say, it is not possible.

Here is the second chapter of James:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?ⁱ 15If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, 16and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?^j 17So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18Indeed someone might say, “You have faith and I have works.” Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works. 19You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble. 20Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? 21Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?^k 22You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works. 23Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called “the friend of God.”^l 24See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route?^m 26For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

 

The Greek word for "faith" in James 2 (the faith and works discourse) is the same Greek word (pistis) translated as "belief" in the passage from Mark that I quoted above.   Does pistis mean "steadfastness" in any way?  Or does it only mean an intellectual assent?  It goes on to use pisteuis in the next verse to mean "believe" as in "You believe that God is one" and then "pisteuousin" in "Even the demons believe, and shudder."   The "faith" mentioned in James is then the same as the "belief" which even demons can have.  

I don't really think of demons as "steadfast."

Anyway, as I said in my comment to Darwin's post, the image of a faithful spouse is apt.  Faith in, and faithfulness to, a spouse are very precisely designed to be an image of faith in, and faithfulness to, God. They are so bound up in each other as to not be separable; but at the same time, it is possible to "be faithful," to "do faithfulness," even in times of doubt or -- God forbid -- abandonment.  

This is what I would like to get across to anyone who says they wishes they could have faith but that it has never come to them. Anyone can, without committing a single act of intellectual dishonesty. It is simply a matter of becoming a faithful servant, or spouse, or child of God. To act faithfully -- the precise nature of the "acts of faith" depends on our state in life and our circumstances -- is to have faith. The ability to act faithfully, the possession of faith, both come from grace, the only thing by which we are saved.

Obedience in dissent, with cultural notes.

Simcha has a great post today.  

(Beginning to think I should just have a category called DIRECT LINKS TO SIMCHA FISHER AND MARK BARNES.)

A reader asks her, 

I feel that I am a faithful Catholic- attend Mass, pray regularly, try to follow the Church in all things. But I fall short on this with one issue- I do disagree about the Church’s stance on homosexuality and gay marriage. My beloved sister is a lesbian...I cannot/ do not look at what my sister is doing as wrong. I’m happy she found someone she loves to spend her life with. I love her children, and I’m so happy that they exist. My sister and her partner are raising them wonderfully...

Sometimes conservative Catholic bloggers will talk about how they struggled with a Church teaching, but the post always ends with how they changed, and saw the light, and saw the truth and beauty in the Church’s teachings. But what are you supposed to do when that doesn’t happen?

There's more than one question wrapped up in that post, of course.  Let me pick one excerpt from Simcha's answer:

Sometimes people think that the Church requires us all to be prophets with bullhorns, or prissy grand inquisitors — that the only way we can ally ourselves with the Church is to be thoroughly obnoxious.

Or perhaps we believe that believing something means feeling good about believing it.  These ideas are actually very handy temptations, courtesy of the devil.  They make excellent obstacles to obedience.

So what is the reader supposed to do?  Certainly not shun or treat her sister, the partner, or the children with disdain; certainly not wish them misery, wish that they hadn’t been born.  Certainly not pick over their house, hunting for evidence of degeneracy.  Depending on the situation, the Church may or may not want the reader to even speak to the sister about her lifestyle, now that it’s so firmly established.

Read the whole thing.  The main thrust of the post is that we are all dissenters about something or other, to one degree or another, and because of that this is really a universal problem of the human heart.  If we value obedience --to legitimate authority within its legitimate sphere, of course -- sooner or later we must come up against some principle we haven't taken to heart.  How do we deal with that?  How do we recognize it?

But there's also another question here:  The question of how faithful Catholics are to live in a world, and sometimes in families, with a broader definition of "marriage" than we can parrot back.  It is still an open and vague one.  

For the time being, the official work of the Church in this area is to work to preserve, one way or another, our freedom to assert what we believe to be true about it.  The Church hasn't quite given up the hope that the larger culture can be steered back to an acceptance of something closer to that same truth.

Now, I don't wish to question the wisdom of this approach heavily, because I am not an expert in pastoral techniques of any kind, let alone large-scale culture-steering.  Cynicism is a fault of mine.  

But:  I tend to believe that this particular horse has already left the barn, and that it was my fellow heterosexuals who drove it out foaming at the mouth.  I think we are already in dire need for pastoral assistance in dealing charitably and truthfully with the world around us here.  It is NOT easy, as Simcha's reader's situation (and countless others) demonstrate.

 In many ways it's not new:  Families everywhere have always hosted an endless stream of intra- and inter-familial messages along the lines of "If you do not take steps to demonstrate your approval of my actions, that is the same to me as a demonstration that you do not love me."  If there is any difference now, it's that much more often the "approval" runs against values that transcend the merely cultural or habitual.   We expect family members to get used to a "black sheep" who merely dressed embarrassingly unconventionally, or pursued a career different from the expected one, or joined the "wrong" political party, or married a person from a different class or ethnic group, or wanted to move too far away or stay too close to home.   But -- and this is still a strong, widely held value in the United States -- it's entirely different to expect people to "get used to" being asked to deny, explicitly or implicitly, publically or privately, their religious beliefs.  

Don't we all get impatient with the bishops sometimes?  I think we're long overdue for some real pastoral advice on how to live, and how to love others, in a world where regular denial of our religious beliefs is expected of us -- both through public economic acts and through ordinary social rituals.

It's love and truth.  They are never in conflict -- not really.  One without the other is impossible.  But we ordinary, foolish humans can screw it up royally, trying to carry them both like a burden, and end up delivering neither.

Fasting in Paradise.

Melanie has dug up a quote that suggests the Genesis "don't eat that fruit" rule amounted to a prescribed fast:

"Fasting restores to those who practice it the father’s house from which Adam was cast out… God himself, the friend of man (Wsd 1,6), first entrusted to fasting the man he had created, as to a loving mother, as to a teacher. He had forbidden him to taste of one tree only (Gn 2,17) and if the man had observed this fast he would have dwelt with angels. But he rejected it and so found anguish and death, the sharpness of thorns and thistles and the sorrow of a miserable life (Gn 3,17f.) Now, if fasting is shown to be of value in Paradise, how much more must it be so here below to win us life eternal!". 

(Link: http://thewinedarksea.com/index.php/weblog/on_fasting/ )

It is a fruitful meditation. I wrote about a similar theme some time ago, only I identified the forbidding of the Edenic fruit as a "dietary law" rather than a fast:

"Which takes me to the Garden of Eden. How many times have you read or heard a non-Christian, non-Jewish person complaining of the arbitrariness of that whole "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" nonsense? Why would God care if they ate this one fruit? There's no good reason for it -- whoever wrote it down even made a point of mentioning that the stuff was good to eat, so what's the big deal? Alternatively, you'll occasionally see a well-meaning believer defending the don't-eat-that rule on some practical ground of healthfulness or learning obedience or some such thing.
I think it's easier to understand the story -- and this works both if you take the story as something that really happened, or if you take it as a useful teaching story passed down by one of the world's most influential cultures -- as the story of the first dietary law. The first "We eat this, not that. Just because."Pointing at the fruit of the tree while uttering "In the day you eat of it you shall surely die" is not, inherently, any nuttier than pointing at your tablemate's cheeseburger while muttering, "That shit'll kill you." It doesn't matter that the modern health nut thinks that science is on his side -- it's still a prediction of religious significance -- because in reality the connection between any given cheeseburger and the untimely death of the cheeseburger-eater is practically zero, unless the eater chokes on it, I suppose. And even if a lifetime diet of cheeseburgers will shorten your life, who's to say that's not a reasonable choice for someone who likes cheeseburgers?But let's go back to dietary laws for a minute. It's significant that the breaking of a dietary law should play such a crucial role in the stories I'm speaking of. And it's not something that's alien to human nature either. There are many layers to the story, but I can't help but think that it's in part a lesson that there are limits to our natural inclinations. The tree's fruit was "good to eat," and there is no reason to assume the senses of the man and woman couldn't be trusted. Yet, as the story goes, it was better, in that place and in that time, to choose not to eat it. Resisting, if only on occasion, what we naturally want and can see is a good thing, must itself be something good. And doesn't that fit with our ordinary experience?"

(link: http://arlinghaus.typepad.com/blog/2010/04/dietary-laws.html )

One difference between a dietary law and a fast is that a dietary law is generally lifelong -- see the regulations of keeping kosher or halal, or the philosophy of an ethically committed vegetarian. Fasts, on the other hand, are generally temporary. In Jewish history, the permanence and complexity of the dietary law served many purposes -- among other things, to provide a concrete manifestation of identity among the chosen people, to clearly demarcate them from the peoples that surrounded them.  

Another difference is that fasting can be regarded as a positive act, and when prescribed, as a positive duty similar to the duties of prayer and almsgiving. To adhere to a dietary law is more like a negative duty, a "thou shalt not." Negative duties are by their nature more binding than positive ones.

Does it matter whether we identify the forbidding of the fruit as a dietary law or as a fast? Or is it simply a third example of the same sort of class of commandments? Either way it is instructive to meditate upon the words, "for in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death."

   

A more interesting statistic about Catholics and birth control.

In one sense, statistics about "who does what" are irrelevant.   The fight to overturn the HHS mandate forcing insurers and/or employers to cover contraception is a fight about religious freedom, and it really doesn't matter how many people use contraception and how many employers object to paying for it directly or indirectly.  

It is, after all, religious minorities -- groups of people who adhere to beliefs that are unusual in the wider society -- who require the most protection and who desire the most accommodation in the civil structure.  If your philosophical beliefs and practices are common, ordinary, and widespread -- such as making time for worship on the weekends, or eating only non-animal foods, or giving presents to your children on a quiet, at-home Christmas morning -- we can assume that there is some accommodation for them built right into the fabric of society, since some of your co-believers will have helped put that society together.  Indeed, if we look around we see that many jobs (though not all) are available which leave room for weekend worship, that Christmas is a day when few people (though not without exception) have obligations outside the family, that vegetarianism is largely accepted and that many eating establishments offer meatless items year-round.

If you're a member of a religious minority, though, you occasionally may ask for, and legitimately receive, accommodations written into the law.  Laws like the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits the federal government from burdening a person's exercise of religion unless it demonstrates that it does so in furtherance of a compelling government interest AND  is the least restrictive means of doing so.  The mandate doesn't further the government's interest (which is stated to increase "access" to contraception, and that has been shown not to be a problem) and it's not the least restrictive means (which would be something like a rider that an employee can purchase) and so the 1993 law, enacted during the notoriously right-wing Clinton administration, almost certainly renders the HHS mandate illegal.  

But it's obvious that the media is happy to wave this "98 percent of Catholic women use birth control" statistic around because someone thinks  it matters, or that it will matter if enough people hear it.  I think the idea must be something along these lines: Few Catholics consistently obey the Church's teachings, therefore we can make the nation think that it isn't a "real" or sincere religious belief that deserves accommodation.

If that's the case, then there is a lot of misdirection going on.  Because of course the freedom that is being infringed here is not the freedom to refrain from taking contraceptive pills or being sterilized.  (The government had to stop forcing people to contracept and be sterilized some time ago... must have been back in the dark ages... oh wait, it was 1981.)

No, the freedom being infringed is the freedom not to buy pills and sterilization for other people who want them.  So perhaps a much, much better thing to ask is:  "How many Catholic employers and insurers either cover contraceptives in their employee insurance plan or directly pay for them for their employees?"

Oops, now we have a conundrum.  Because if the number is small compared to the general population of employers and insurers, well then, there just might be something to the argument that Catholic employers and insurers have a real and sincere religious belief that precludes them from paying for other people's contraceptives.  And if the number is similar or large compared to the general population of employers and insurers, well, then, what exactly is the problem that needs to be solved by forcing them?  

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But even the question of "how sincere is this religious belief" is misdirected.  There is no test for sincerity in the Clinton-era law protecting the free exercise of religion against the federal government.  

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Here is a pair of recent statistics that you may find interesting.  (Via Red Cardigan, who herself found it via Get Religion).  

Of U. S. Catholics:

•  Fraction who say they attend Mass once a week or more:  22%. 
•  Fraction who say they agree that using artificial means of birth control is wrong:  22%.

(The first statistic is from CARA, a Catholic think tank.  The second is from a recent CNN poll.)

Only twenty-two percent of people who call themselves Catholics are going to Mass once a week.  This number is, of course, disturbingly low.  Recall that weekly Mass attendance is, in the Catholic faith, compulsory (though allowances are made, on the honor system, for duties and conditions that interfere with the obligation).  

Often, when you wish to define who is and who isn't a "practicing" Catholic, weekly Mass attendance is used as a reasonable proxy.  It's a practice that is required by the Church, it is relatively easy to measure, and it is public.  It is debatable whether this is the best proxy, but it is at least convenient.

The same proportion of Catholics agree with the teaching against artificial birth control.

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Let's do a little calculation with estimates using data from the Pew Forum.   Nearly 24% of the U. S. population is Catholic.  Twenty-two percent of that is 5.3% of the U. S. population.  This is only a little bit more than the number of people (4.7%) who belong to non-Christian religions, who, I think most reasonable people agree, deserve careful attention to their religious accommodations because their minority status places them at the margins of public discourse.  Just as unpopular speech is the speech that most needs protection, uncommon exercises of religious belief are those that most need accommodation.

We are a religious minority.

It is not what we would choose, but it is the reality we live in.

 

Not giving up.

I thought I'd take a minute to mention that I am not giving up blogging, Facebook, or email for Lent.

However, the children in a lively discussion last week came to a consensus that a good family Lenten discipline would be to turn off the computers and other devices right before dinner and leave them off until morning. This will undoubtedly cut down on my total output (and input, I suppose).  So:  you've been forewarned. 

To those who are planning on seriously curtailing your electronic media exposure for the next forty days or so:  Godspeed, and see you at Easter!

More on First Saturdays: the results of an experiment I didn't know I was doing.

Some time ago, while I was working on the Total Consecration, I wrote about my reluctance to enter deeply into Marian devotions -- a reluctance that was brought into high relief when I encountered a certain online book by Fr. William Most that discussed Mary as "co-Redemptrix":

"This is the kind of Marian writing that makes the tops of Protestants' heads blow off. ...[A]s I read it, I found myself struggling with some of the concepts, precisely because of the Protestant, anti-Marian influence in American Christian culture. It was very edifying, because intellectually, Father Most's arguments make a great deal of sense to me. And yet the logical conclusion of his arguments suggests an attitude toward the Blessed Virgin that feels radical to me. Deep down, it seems, I feel a sort of repulsion against fully embracing the idea of Mary as intercessor, which as I search my history seems can only have come from contact with American Protestantism. I didn't even realize that I felt that internal repulsion until reading Fr. Most's arguments forced me to confront it."

 

I have long had that feeling about many Marian devotions. Take, for example, the Five First Saturdays devotion. Originating in a request that Our Lady reportedly made in an apparition to Lucia Santos, it is a superficially pleasant-sounding-enough activity: Attend Mass, say a rosary, go to Confession, and spend fifteen minutes in meditation, all with the intention of making reparation for sins committed against the mother of Jesus. Do it five first Saturdays in a row, and you are done. A simple little thing, not terribly demanding, a one-time commitment, like making a pilgrimage.

But I was always bothered by the fact that, in recommending it to us, the Church, or Mary, didn't stop there, but instead went on to promise something in return. Here is a direct quote of what Sister Lucia reports that Mary told her in her vision:

"I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all who on the First Saturday of five consecutive months confess their sins, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the purpose of making reparation to my Immaculate Heart."

One resistance:  I felt that this promise ...cheapened the devotion somehow. And that Mary had made it that much harder to do it with the purpose of making reparation, by dangling a carrot of promised graces before us.

It felt presumptuous too. All I have to do is check off these items, and I get the graces necessary for salvation? (I hadn't noticed the subtle difference between promising salvation, and promising the graces necessary for salvation.)

Finally, it seemed disturbingly superstitious, which is to say that I could not see any logical or natural connection between "do these things now, and when you die, possibly far off in the future, after who knows what temptations have assailed you and after you have failed in who knows how many ways, you will get something you don't deserve, just because you checked off the boxes." Even if I mean it now, suppose I become hard and unrepentant later? How can doing this now protect me and help me then? This put it in company with a number of other Marian devotions, e.g., the wearing of the Brown Scapular (what? Die with your magic necklace on and you're good to go? How does THAT work?)

Okay, well, I decided to try to do it anyway. I get Saturday mornings off, at least if Mark isn't traveling, and so I didn't have much excuse not to give it a whirl. I prayed for the grace to purify my intentions, so that I really could do it with the purpose of making reparation; I found a local parish that had a Saturday morning Mass; and off I went, on the first Saturday in July, which turned out to be the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I went on to complete the devotion over the next four months as prescribed.

For the benefit of anyone else who is creeped about Marian devotions because they smack of superstition, presumption, and illogical connections, I want to report back on two results that had the effect of removing my creeped-outedness completely. The caveat is that they are specific to me -- I haven't the foggiest idea whether other people would get similar results. Another caveat is that I can only speak for this moment in time -- for all I know I may think differently after life has thrown more curveballs at me. I am just throwing it out there, as a sort of personal testimony, in the now.

Direct result #1 of doing the Five First Saturdays: I discovered that I rather like going to Mass and confession once a month. This was a bit of a surprise. I rather thought I would be ready to have a "Woo-hoo, I did it, now I'm done!" party. Instead, by the time I had been through five of them, I wanted to keep it up. And so now it is sort of an established habit of mine. I go to Mass on the first Saturday of the month, if I can. I show up early enough to say the rosary with the other folks who are there. I go to Confession. After my penance I stick around for fifteen minutes. I like it. I don't know why I never thought of going to Mass on Saturday mornings before, along with the trip to the gym and the library and getting my hair cut and running personal errands and all those other things I try to do in those few hours I have to myself each week. It was a great idea that I somehow never came up with on my own. I don't know for sure if I will keep it up for the rest of my life, but it has certainly lasted longer than the five Saturdays I originally signed up for, and who knows how much good I will get out of it? Maybe exactly what is necessary.

Direct result #2: On the second Saturday, the priest in the confessional advised me to make the Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary. If you have been following along at all, you know that the Total Consecration, encompassing as it does pretty much all authentic Marian devotion, feels to me transcendently more radical than something like the five first Saturdays. Here I was, just trying to check off the boxes and asking please for the grace to do it with the right intentions and not the wrong ones, and now I was being invited to go deeper. I went away knowing I had at least a responsibility to find out more about the Consecration and to discern whether I should make it. You know by now that I did this, and that I made the Consecration in the fall.

Has it changed me in any real way? I can't know that for sure. I hope so. But its totality, inherently, promises more than five Saturdays seems capable of promising. The Five First Saturdays seemed so mean a commitment; so much more might happen to me afterwards; it seemed insane to accept that in any natural way, in any just way, they could be part of the cause of graces received maybe fifty years from now or more. But the Total Consecration promises to be a bridge across the unknown future, between now and that hour of my death, across all the pitfalls that could still swallow me, across the pavement of my good intentions. It is not a guarantee, but it is an accessible path from here to there. And there is no doubt that the invitation came as a result of the First Saturdays.

Obviously there is no way I can generalize from my experience to anyone else's. I only know what is inside me. And I have written before that I am fully aware of the proclivity of the human mind to see patterns wherever we want to see them. Perhaps I am only unconsciously justifying my irrational decisions by overlaying a perception of rationality that comes from outside myself and cannot be falsified by any external test. Like persisting in the belief that my spouse loves me; I can't prove its truth or falsity, but it is certainly convenient to think so.

It is just that I tried something that I couldn't make sense of, and received a result that -- well -- not so much made it make sense, as left the possibility that it could make sense. And as a result, I am not sorry I tried. YMMV.

 

"Daily Mass as the original 'small group.'"

Thoughtful reflection from Amy Welborn on the utility of "small groups" in Catholic parishes.

When I go to daily Mass in this town, whereever  go, there are at least fifty people there.  During Advent and Lent, far more.

Think about it – in your parish, during Lent, probably 200 people gather daily in a “small group.”

They enjoy catechesis through the language of the liturgy itself, the Scripture readings and the homily.  They enjoy the deepest fellowship of all through the Eucharist – being joined not only to the others present but to ever Catholic throughout the world, in heaven, and to Christ himself.

That catechesis, grace and fellowship are real. 

.....when considering “small groups” in a Catholic parish…start with daily Mass. Thank God for what happens there…build on it…stop trying to invent, invent and invent some more.

…and maybe follow the old guys for their after-Mass coffee at McDonald’s and then their morning at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store.  Fellowship? Check. Works of Mercy? Check.

Amy writes in the comments:

When we start from “Wow..there’s no community in this humongous parish..how do we create and build it?” we are rather subtley declaring our dis-believe in the sacramental life of the Body of Christ.

It should be more “We are in communion with each other and with the whole Body of Christ. That is so amazing and fantastic! How can we live this out and be Christ to each other and the world? How are we called to be like Christ crucified and poured out in love?”

Yes.

Par, avec, en, pour.

I posted a couple of days ago about being bothered by the difficult-to-parse prepositions in liturgical phrases, such as in the Doxology and in scriptural passages like "in Christ shall all be brought to life."

One of the things that pleased me about St. Louis de Montfort's True Devotion to Mary was a little section near the end, where he really delved into four different prepositional phrases with Mary as their object.

[T]here are some very sanctifying interior practices [of this devotion] for those whom the Holy Ghost calls to high perfection.

These may be expressed in four words: to do all our actions by [or through] Mary, with Mary, in Mary, and for Mary; so that we may do them all the more perfectly by [or through] Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus, and for Jesus."

Let's first take the phrasing back to the original French to clear up some ambiguities in the translated text. It goes like this: par Marie, avec Marie, en Marie et pour Marie.

I have two different translations of the text, one of which gives us "by" for par, and the other of which gives "through." If you had more than a little French then you know that par can be translated with either word; the sense is "by way of" or "via" or "mediated by." It does not signify "next to" (as "by" sometimes means in English) nor "from one side to the other" (as "through" sometimes means in English). Avec and pour correspond closely with "with" and "for," respectively. En is one of two common prepositions translated as "in" (the other is dans), and it can mean in a place, or in a state, or in a period of time -- or by a type of transportation vehicle: as English speakers would say you go somewhere by car or by plane, the French say en voiture or en avion. it isn't in the literal sense of "enclosed within."

But we are not stuck speculating on meanings just based on our high school French, because St. Louis goes on to explain more precisely what he means by each of these four prepositional phrases.

Take the first of the four. "faire toutes ses actions par Marie" (to do every action through Mary, or "all through Mary"):

We must [il faut] do all our actions by/through [par] Mary; that is to say, we must obey her in all things, and in all things conduct ourselves by her spirit, which is the Holy Spirit of God...

In order that the soul may let itself be led by Mary's spirit, it must first of all renounce its own spirit and its own lights and wills before it does anything...

Secondly, we must deliver ourselves to the spirit of Mary to be moved and influenced by it in the manner she chooses. We must put ourselves and leave ourselves in her virginal hands, like a tool in the grasp of a workman, like a lute in the hands of a skillful player.... This can be done simply, and in an instant, by one glance of the mind, by one little movement of the will, or even verbally, by saying, for example, "I renounce myself, I give myself to thee, dear Mother..."

Thirdly, we must, from time to time, both during and after the action, renew the same act of offering and union...

The second of the four phrases is "faire toutes ses actions avec Marie" (to do every action with Mary, or "all with Mary").

...that is to say, we must in all our actions regard Mary as an accomplished model of every virtue and perfection[,] which the Holy Ghost has formed in a pure creature for us to imitate according to our little measure. We must therefore in every action consider how Mary has done it, or how she would have done it had she been in our place. For that end we must examine and meditate on the great virtues which she practiced during her life...particularly ...her lively faith... her profound humility... and her divine purity....

The third of the phrases is "faire toutes ses actions en Marie" (to do every action in Mary, or "all in Mary." Significantly, the saint does not tell us how to do everything, or anything, "in Mary." It is the only one of the four that lacks specific instructions. He seems not to know how one "does" an action "in Mary." Apparently there is no tip or trick that we can perform that, along with an action, makes that act happen "in" Mary.

But he does tell us that, if only we can know certain truths, perhaps we can "understand this practice." What follows is a lengthy description of what Mary is, what kind of "place" she represents. Here is an excerpt:

Thoroughly to understand this practice, we must first know that our Blessed Lady is the true terrestrial paradise of the New Adam, and that the ancient paradise was but a figure of her...

The Holy Ghost, by the mouth of the Fathers, also styles the Blessed Virgin the Eastern Gate, by which the high priest, Jesus Christ, enters the world and leaves it.... The sanctuary of the Divinity, the repose of the Most Holy Trinity, the throne of God, the city of God, the temple of God, the altar of God, the world of God...

..."My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed... a fountain sealed up."...in that virginal bosom, the soul shall be nourished with the milk of grace and maternal mercy... it shall be delivered of its troubles, fears and scruples; it shall be in safety against all its enemies...it shall be formed in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ in it.

Maybe the saint means to say that "in" Mary is not a way of doing things so much as it is a state of being, a state to which we can aspire through intellectual meditation and acts of trust and self-abandonment.

Finally, the fourth phrase: "faire toutes ses actions pour Marie" (to do everything for Mary, "all for Mary," the "Totus tuus" of Pope John Paul II's personal motto).

As we have given up ourselves entirely to her service, it is but just that we do everything for her as servants and slaves... [W]e must not remain idle, but, supported by her protection, we must undertake and achieve great things for this august sovereign. We must defend her privileges when they are disputed; we must stand up for her glory when it is attacked; we must draw all the world, if we can, to her service... we must speak and cry out against those who abuse her devotion to outrage her Son... we must pretend to no recompense for our little services, except the honor of belonging to so sweet a Queen, and the happiness of being united through her to Jesus her Son...

I think there are several interesting things to be taken away from this discussion.

First, although (probably because of the Pope's motto) the object of the devotion is often summarized as "Totus Tuus," or "All for You" -- all for Mary, or for Jesus through Mary -- it is actually a bit more complicated than that. It's not just "all for," but also "all through, all with, all in" Mary -- and all of that in order that everything we do, we do "through, with, in, and for" Jesus, the ultimate end.

Pondering the four prepositions, I find it easiest to think of them in terms of Mary's role with respect to us. If we do all through Mary, we renounce our own spirit and take up her own, to be led and guided and employed as she pleases. If we do all with her, we are her imitators, she our model. If we do all in her, we trust ourselves to her protection. If we do all for her, she is to us a mistress and a Queen.

It is sort of tempting to think: well then, being "in" Mary is a sure path to being "in" Jesus, and doing our actions "through" Mary is a sure way to do them "through" Christ, and so on. I am not sure that the four prepositions can really be separated out that way. But I do think it is a very simple first step to try that "one little movement of the will" so that an act may be done "through" Mary: "I renounce myself, I give myself to thee." That is a place to start, even if we are puzzled by the saint's advice about "in," and if we are overwhelmed at the thought of imitating the summit of created humanity, and if we are unsure what she requires of her servants. St. Louis says that the important thing about renouncing ourselves is that we do it, that it doesn't matter if it feels any different; it is still real. No one on earth, no barrier at all can keep us from mentally renouncing ourselves in this way at every moment of our lives. And so even if "for" or "in" or "with" doesn't make sense, we can all start with "through." And since what it means is simply to be led by the Holy Spirit in everything, what Christian could object?

Third post about science and faith: Three ways to approach the problem of "lack of scientific evidence for the divine."

This is the third in a series of post in response to a reader's request, asking me to write about the "lack of scientific evidence for the divine," from the perspective of a "scientifically-minded" individual who began Church practice as an adult.

In the first post, I offered a working definition of "scientific evidence" and explained why I wouldn't expect there to be any such evidence for the divine anyway.  In my second post, I considered why a so-called "scientifically-minded individual" would be expected to be less likely to become a believer.  In that post I suggested that it is less a matter of such individuals coming to belief in a special, er, scientifically-mnded way, than it is a matter of finding a way around particular obstacles to accepting the possibility of the divine.

In this post, I want to describe three fundamentally different ways that the scientist who is also a believer deals with the lack of scientific evidence for the divine.

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1.  "What lack of scientific evidence?  I see scientific evidence for a Creator everywhere."

In my first post, I wrote that I, personally, do not believe that there is any scientific evidence for the divine, and in fact I don't expect that there ever will be any.

But that's me.  

You will, of course, find people with scientific or technical training who are deeply impressed by the mathematical laws of the universe, or the structure of the human eye, or the workings of the transformation of species.  They see the handiwork of the Designer there.

I would not call this "scientific" evidence.  What I would call that is an intuitive reaction to realities that required a scientific or technical education in order to fully appreciate.  Perhaps you could fairly characterize it as an accumulation of apparently supporting evidence, or at least of evidence that fails to argue against the divine.

Maybe xkcd captures the spirit I'm talking about best:

Just substitute "evidence for the divine" for "wonder and beauty" and that is pretty close to what we're talking about.

In this category you could also include any people who are seriously into the various philosophies that fit under the umbrella of "intelligent design."  I confess that I am not very current on the details of what the philosophical leaders (as opposed to the political leaders) of the ID movement are discussing right now.  It strikes me that the fundamental philosophical prerequisite is twofold:

• It is possible that a rational being created the laws of the universe, and it cannot be proved otherwise;
• The benefit of the doubt is given to the proposition "There is a God who created the laws of the universe," and it is the opponents who must prove their case.

The latter is arbitrary and, I think, largely a matter of personal non-rational processes.  There is nothing wrong with the yes-to-God proposition, from a purely philosophical standpoint.  But there is really no arguing for or against it in a purely logical way.  Some people (scientists or no) think it better to give the benefit of the doubt to the no-God proposition.   Some refuse to give it to either.   

 

2.  The philosophical approach:   Evidence from within the interior experience of the human person.

Just because a person is a scientist or an engineer or a technician or a computer programmer or an applied mathematician does not mean that she necessarily subscribes to the "scientific evidence is the only important kind of evidence" view.  Pure philosophy, in other words, is accessible to logical thinkers whether or not they possess particular scientific interest or expertise.

Besides the kind of evidence that can be reproduced experimentally or demonstrated to others, so that those others may directly evaluate them, every human being has access to a certain set of direct observations which cannot be demonstrated or reproduced to others.  To the individual, they are experienced as reality, even though they cannot be transferred. 

I'm speaking here of observations of one's own powers of reason and insight, or of the existence of an internal moral code.  

A fact that is unappreciated in our society:  There is absolutely no way you can derive a moral conclusion, a "what ought to be done," from purely natural knowledge ("what is") or from technical expertise ("what could be done").  Scientific and technical expertise is immensely useful in contributing to the discussion of "what ought to be done," because knowledge of what is, and knowledge of what could be, is relevant to narrowing down the choices:  that kind of expertise helps us predict the likely consequences of our actions.  That is why it is useful to have specialists in scientific and technical fields on policy committees.   But even if the consequences of our likely actions could be perfectly predicted by the technical experts, and perfectly explained by them to the public at large. we are still left with the question of which consequences ought to be preferred.  And that question belongs to all humans, not just to the ones with technical expertise.  

I look inside myself and I see a moral code.  Other people tell me that they look inside themselves and see moral codes (they can't prove it to me, but for the purpose of this argument I will assume they are not lying).  It is in this personal moral code that many people are forced to conclude that they really do believe in free will, in the existence of "right" moral decisions and "wrong" ones, and through a philosophical chain of reasoning conclude that all this must be discarded unless the proposition "God exists" is accepted.  Not wanting to discard the propositions that the will is free and that certain decisions are right and others wrong, they choose to accept the "yes to God" proposition.

A basic outline of this essentially philosophical basis for the "yes to God" proposition can be found in the opening pages of C. S. Lewis's popular work Mere Christianity.  ("Look inside" the book and you'll get the gist of it.  There's nothing about being "scientifically minded" that would make a person any more or less likely to accept Lewis's argument, as it's accessible through propositions and logic, not through technical expertise.  Whether the propositions are accepted or not is, I think, personal.)

A different interior observation on which to found belief in a Deity could be observation of the self's powers of reason.  I know that some have argued that rational thinking (which can't be demonstrated or transferred, only observed within the self) must arise from rational, not irrational processes.  I haven't explored this line of thinking myself; but I know others who have.

 

This category of "interior, personal human experience" could also refer to a person who believes he has received a personal communication or revelation from God.  Ultimately, this too is an interior experience (in the sense that it cannot be shared directly with others).  It can't be transferred.  And yet the individual who is confident in its authenticity has what can be called direct experience that, depending on its strength, could easily trump all arguments.

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3.  Historical evidence.

I mentioned historical evidence in the first post, because I wanted to point out that it is a common category of evidence which is not scientific.  (Because not reproducible -- by definition.)  And yet most people, even scientists, commonly accept propositions which are based on nothing but this kind of evidence.  Historical evidence includes hearsay, accounts from witnesses long dead, scraps of copied and recopied text, minor details in works of fiction, damaged artifacts, and oral histories.   And yet we are still confident in many of our conclusions. We have a list of the names of the Egyptian pharaohs. We teach kids that Leif Ericson led the first European expedition to land in North America.  We know that William Shakespeare of Stratford, England wrote Othello, even though a small group disputes that.  Well:  certain arguments for the existence of God also rest on what are essentially historical claims.  Disputed?  Yes.  So are other widely-accepted historical events, and not always by a small fringe group.  

Christianity, at least, is a faith which turns entirely on a single historical claim.   Christians claim that just outside Judea, on a Sunday morning around Passover time, during the governorship of Pontius Pilate, this particular guy who had been executed by the Romans the previous Friday, and buried by some Jewish friends of his, rose from the dead of his own accord.  

It is this claim, and nothing else, that (if true) would lend credence to the rather outlandish ideas that the guy had been spouting in the months leading up to his execution.

We moderns tend to lose sight of the fact that the Christian claim is fundamentally about a historical event that either did or did not happen.  This is because the Christian claim leads its followers down some startling philosophical paths, and the conclusions necessarily conflict with those arrived at by people starting from different beginning points.  Consequently, many layers of questions and answers have been built up around that claim in defense of the conclusions.  

So:  A good many modern believers approach the question in the opposite direction -- first asking, Do I believe there is a God? and then asking What ought God be like?  and finally Which faith seems to me to have the right claims about God?    If that question leads them to Christianity, then they have to consider whether they believe the Resurrection really happened.  There's no doubt that the moral and theological teachings of Christianity are appealing to many folks.  Presumably a great many are pleased enough with Christian practice and teachings that, once they burrow to the center of it, they are ready to assent to the historical question too, if only to prevent cognitive dissonance.  

(Others don't bother with the Resurrection thing.  It is not hard to find Christians who regard it as largely symbolic.  I assume they find other ways to deal with the cognitive dissonance.)

But the ancients who converted to the new faith necessarily went in the opposite direction.   Did you hear about this guy who hinted that he was God and then when they killed him he rose from the dead? And people saw him walking around and eating at cookouts and showing off his death wounds and explaining stuff to people?  And:  So what else did this guy say about God before they killed him?  And:  So what are they saying he said after that?

Perspectives on temptation.

I plan to spend my lunchtime recess reading the new Neal Stephenson novel instead of blogging, so instead I'll link to The Mom's great post from today.  I haven't written about gluttony for a while (and am probably due) but I'll leave you with this instead.  

She writes about the difficulty of food restriction to suppress heartburn:

My eldest daughter asked me yesterday, "The carbs and sugars hurt you, but you still eat them.  If they were bad for the baby would you give them up?"  Of course, I told her, I love the baby.  "But you don't love yourself?"  I simply sat dumbfounded by her question.  If I were my child I would do a better job of protecting me.

I try not to sin because I love God and because I love the people my sin would harm.  I don't want to hurt anyone, and so I pray and ask for help with my areas of weakness.  I work and pray on it daily.

I've never asked anyone in my family to help me deal with the physical side effects of pregnancy.  I choose to carry this burden alone.  Why shouldn't I ask them for help?  They could be the food conscience I have obviously not formed well in myself.  Because these kids can nag like nobody's business.  I just have never wanted to ask the whole family to change the way they eat for me.  I've seen that as somehow selfish, which is ridiculous.

The food on my table is something which is completely within my control.  I am the master of the pantry, and yet I still fail daily to avoid temptation and the suffering which results from it.  How much more difficult it is to maintain my fear of the fires of Hell.  The truth of it all is that I am a weak human being and am not so great at avoiding temptation.  I couldn't even avoid the bite of doughnut my 2 year old offered me this morning.  Temptation doesn't come in ugly packaging, it comes wrapped in sweetness, covered with sprinkles and delivered with a smile.  The trick, I think, is to know our weaknesses and avoid them at all costs (like not buying the doughnuts to begin with) and to fight our failings not with fear but with love.

Read the whole thing.