Benedict xvi: Joy of the council

[JReducation]

I read the little bit that was posted elsewhere about the Holy Father’s address to the Roman clergy. It sounded out of context. Today, I received the full text of that talk in an email. It’s available on Vatican Information Service

I’ll just copy and paste a few sentences that struct me as very interesting.

**We went to the Council not just with joy, but enthusiastically. There was an incredible expectation. We hoped that everything would be renewed, that a new Pentecost, a new era in the Church, had truly arrived, … rediscovering the bond between the Church and the world’s best elements, to open humanity’s future, to begin real progress. **

What I particularly like about this sentence is that it states, very matter-of-fact, that the Council Fathers were not evil men seeking to destroy the Church as many people try to paint them. They went to Rome with a dream, a vision and a hope. Who can deny or affirm that in any large group there are or are not people with their own agenda? No one can do that. But we can and should affirm that the group had a very positive agenda, even if there were some individuals with other agendas.

We must remember that it’s not enough to judge, redeem or convict the Council. We must be personally holy in how we speak to and about our brothers and sisters and our Church. Neither denouncing or defending is going to get us to heaven. Only our kindness, humility in speech and honesty without arrogance can reflect the holiness of God.

** I think that it was very good to begin with the liturgy, showing God’s primacy, the primacy of adoration. … The Council spoke of God and this was its first act: speaking of God and opening everything to the people, opening the adoration of God to the entire holy people, in the common celebration of the liturgy of the Body and Blood of Christ. … The principles came later: comprehensibility, so as not to be locked in an unknown and unspoken language, and active participation. Unfortunately, sometimes these principles are misunderstood. Comprehensibility does not mean triviality because the great texts of the liturgy―even when they are, thanks be to God, in one’s mother tongue―are not easily understandable. Ongoing formation is necessary for Christians to grow and enter more deeply into the mystery so they might understand**

I wanted to draw attention to the red, but without the entire statement, it would make no sense. There is definitely a need of formation. No matter what the language, the mystery of God, man, adoration, love, sacrifice, thanksgiving, and communion is often beyond the education of the average Catholic. He needs more formation to understand it and to live it in worship and in daily life.
**
The basis for dialogue is in difference, in diversity, in the faith of the uniqueness of Christ who is one, and it is not possible for a believer to think that religions are variations on the same theme. No. There is a reality of the living God who has spoken and who is one God, an incarnate God, therefore one word of God who is truly the Word of God. But there is also a religious experience, with a certain human light on creation, and therefore it is necessary and possible to enter into dialogue and so to open oneself to others and to open all to God peace, all His children, all His family."**

I found this very powerful, because he is clarifying that all religions are not the same. There is only one Revelation. However, one cannot deny that there is such a thing as religious experience, which people of different faiths have.

He also seems to point out that there is a need to share (talk about) our religious experiences, but this requires that we be willing to listen to those of others too. This is a first step.

 

[YoungTradCath]

It was a very powerful talk he gave because, as someone else said, it validated two sides of the same coin: the side that claims that the Council was a great joy and good, and the side that claims that we need to recognize and realize the reality of what actually happened in the Council’s name and, in a sense, reform it in an authentic spirit. In other words, his talk validated everyone other than the extremists. I love when the Pope speaks in such an off-the-cuff way.

 

[triumphguy]

It was a very powerful talk he gave because, as someone else said, it validated two sides of the same coin: the side that claims that the Council was a great joy and good, and the side that claims that we need to recognize and realize the reality of what actually happened in the Council’s name and, in a sense, reform it in an authentic spirit. In other words, his talk validated everyone other than the extremists. I love when the Pope speaks in such an off-the-cuff way.

The Pope didn’t blame the Council or the Council Fathers for that but the media.

I would now like to add yet a third point: there was the Council of the Fathers - the true Council - but there was also the Council of the media. It was almost a Council in and of itself, and the world perceived the Council through them, through the media.

en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/02/14/pope_to_rome’s_priests:_the_second_vatican_council,_as_i_saw_it/en1-664858

But the real strength of the Council was present and slowly it has emerged and is becoming the real power which is also true reform, true renewal of the Church. It seems to me that 50 years after the Council, we see how this Virtual Council is breaking down, getting lost and the true Council is emerging with all its spiritual strength. And it is our task, in this Year of Faith, starting from this Year of Faith, to work so that the true Council with the power of the Holy Spirit is realized and Church is really renewed. We hope that the Lord will help us. I, retired in prayer, will always be with you, and together we will move ahead with the Lord in certainty. The Lord is victorious. Thank you.

 

[JReducation]

I believe that the message was a warning to the clergy of Rome. It is true that the Church of the latter half of the 20th century was very influenced by the media. We often forget that until recent times, deacons, priests, bishops, religious sisters and religious brothers had very little to do with the Vatican. The Vatican is in Rome and we’re out here, where ever here is for the individual.

Most of the time, one got his information from the news. Communication was not what it is today. Today, it is fast and inexpensive. That was not the case in the 1960s. The fastest and cheapest means of communication was TV, radio and the press. If you wanted to verify anything, you had to write a letter, send it to the Curia in Rome, hope that some one would open it, read and pass it on to the appropriate person who would then issue a response. Communicating with Rome was often very frustrating.

In the meantime, there were the “scholars” who traveled around lecturing, doing TV interviews and making all kinds of statements about what Vatican II expected from the rest of us. That was much more accessible. It was very easy to simply go with what was being said than try to find out from the horse’s mouth.

It would be grossly unfair to charge the younger generation with this problem. The men and women who picked up the “spirit of Vatican II” from the media and ran with it were the men and women who entered religious life or the priesthood before 1960. In other words, they were not the baby boomers. They were born before WW II. They transmitted to the baby boomers what they believed to be the vision of Vatican II.

It was not until the explosion of things like the internet, better telephone communications, faster air travel, modernization of the Roman Curia (which is still behind the times in technology, but it was worse), it was not until the great technological explosion that we began to hear that what we were told and what Vatican II actually said were not compatible.

I feel that this is the warning the His Holiness is giving to the Roman clergy. He’s telling them to beware of not falling into the same trap, not letting history repeat itself. To avoid this, they too have to make good use of modern technology to stay in touch with the Holy See, rather than depend on the media to deliver the message.

This does not mean that every journalist is corrupt or anti Catholic. I simply means that journalists are not experts in Catholicism. They don’t always understand what they see or hear. They interpret it, usually incorrectly. Even their language is incorrect. Such terms a liberal and conservative did not enter the Church through theology. It was through journalism. Journalism began to use modifiers to describe Catholics that they normally used for politicians. Suddenly, we were not just Catholics. Were were liberal Catholics, conservative Catholics and now traditional Catholics. These are terms from the world of politics. But journalists are not trained in our language. Part of that is our fault.

It was not until recently that the Catholic Church actually started to train men and women in Catholic journalism. I know this, because my future son-in-law studied Catholic journalism in Rome. It’s a very specialized area in journalism. It’s a wonderful area, because these journalists understand Catholic jargon. They understand the structure of the Church. They understand our laws. Unfortunately, there are not many of them. We’re still getting our interpretations from secular journalism. That’s dangerous. We can just look back at the last 50 years and see the damage that poor reporting and poor education can do to the Church. If one gets his information from the NYT and then teaches it as if it were absolute truth, it sets the stage for confusion and frustration. This is the Holy Father’s warning to his priests. He’s speaking to them as their bishop, not their pope. Remember, this is his diocese.

 

[triumphguy]

A good summary of the problem Brother.

And I agree it’s time to get rid of those labels, and just be orthodox.

Though typing that caused me to think about the role of “dissent” from the orthodox. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Is dissent inherently wrong, or is there a place for it within orthodoxy?

 

[JReducation]

A good summary of the problem Brother.

And I agree it’s time to get rid of those labels, and just be orthodox.

Though typing that caused me to think about the role of “dissent” from the orthodox. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Is dissent inherently wrong, or is there a place for it within orthodoxy?

I think that there is a difference between dissent and disagreement. This is where many people, especially in Traddon and the Holy See do not see eye to eye.

Within the Church there is room for a certain amount of disagreement. Dissent is a term that the Church applies in very serious cases.

Take Archbishop Lefebvre and Father Hans Kung. Both have dissented in different ways. One may ask, how is it that Father Kung still has a canonical place in the Church and Archbishop Lefebvre died without such a place.

The answer is found in the matter on which they dissent. The Archbishop’s dissent was one that was prohibited by Canon Law. You cannot ordain bishops without a papal mandate. Father Kung’s dissent carries a different set of consequences according to the law. He was stripped of his license to teach as a Catholic theologian. That was the area of his dissent. When it comes to the exercise of priestly ministry, the man has not violated any laws that would strip him of a canonical place in the Church. Teaching theology is not a canonical role.

Then you have softer disagreements that are not at the level of those of Father Kung. These are the disagreements on certain points of doctrine, moral theology, liturgy, pastoral practices, and law. However, these disagreements are not serious enough to warrant the loss of a right or a privilege. At best, the Holy See views them as worthy of a slap on the wrist. The man in the pew may say that Father N playing a guitar during mass is an abuse. The Holy See looks at it and says, "It is inappropriate and not allowed by the rubrics, but there is a difference between violating the rubrics or disagreeing with the rubrics and abuse. Be that as it may, to the authorities in the Church this is not dissent, but disagreement, disobedience, immaturity, silliness, or self-indulgence. It still has to be corrected. But it need not be corrected with penalties.

In essence, I believe that there are two levels of dissent. The most serious is the one that carries an automatic excommunication or at the very least a suspension. The next rung down is less serious, but carries a consequence that the hierarchy can impose at its discretion. Then there is disparity, which is not the same as dissent, because one is not denying anything. One is simply doing something or not doing something. That something is serious enough to warrant attention and correction, but not serious enough to warrant a penalty.

In secular life it would look something like this:

1. Spouse cheats — merits an excommunication from the marriage bed. No questions asked.
2. Child smokes pot – merits the loss of privileges of the higher order, whatever is most important to him.

In both cases, there are penalties.

1. Child argues with parent – there are less severe ways of teaching the child how to communicate without being argumentative. The intervention could take the form or guidance and redirection rather than a penalty. The child is failing to see the importance of a specific social skill, composure in disagreement.

 

[JReducation]

A good summary of the problem Brother.

And I agree it’s time to get rid of those labels, and just be orthodox.

I wanted to address this separately, because this is a pet peeve of mine. I have seen more families and religious communities divided by stupid labels than by actual sin.

I have seen posters here make statements such as “My spouse is an NO Catholic and I’m a traditionalist.”

That way of thinking about one’s spouse draws a line in the sand between Christ and his Church, aka: husband and wife. One’s spouse is just as Catholic as one is. He or she has his or her own spiritual life, which is the right of every Catholic. He finds nourishment in a particular environment. As spouses one must support the other spouse’s journey, not try to redirect it to conform to one’s own. The use of such labels can be the beginning or a sign of a conflict in the marriage. It’s an unnecessary conflict.

I have lived in religious houses where men define themselves as traditional, conservative, liberal and now traditional. I say, “No, you’re a Franciscan, period.” This is the Rule of St. Francis. This is the Constitution of this community that you promised to obey until death. The rest should be personal expressions of your life journey as a Franciscan. Your brothers should support your journey and you must support their journey. The Rule is very clear. You are a brotherhood, whether you like the EF or OF, whether you’re a Latin Catholic or a Melkite Catholic, whether you’re from Africa or America, whether you’re young or old, whether you prefer a habit or a pair of slacks. The fist vocation is to be a brother to your brothers. That fraternal bond takes on many expressions. As long as there is an expression of fraternity, we’re on the right track. When we begin to use labels, we begin to subdivide the community and brothers suddenly become cousins and eventually just acquaintances.

That’s my pet peeve with labels and why I do not allow them used in our community. In a community as young and as small as my own, such labels would destroy us in less than a year. We don’t have enough brothers to have these silly factions.

The same is true in a family. Families cannot survive these factions. Families are small unites of society. So stay away from the labels. Identify the needs and help each other find spiritual food according to the needs of the other.

 

[triumphguy]

I think that there is a difference between dissent and disagreement. This is where many people, especially in Traddon and the Holy See do not see eye to eye.

Within the Church there is room for a certain amount of disagreement. Dissent is a term that the Church applies in very serious cases.

Take Archbishop Lefebvre and Father Hans Kung. Both have dissented in different ways. One may ask, how is it that Father Kung still has a canonical place in the Church and Archbishop Lefebvre died without such a place.

The answer is found in the matter on which they dissent. The Archbishop’s dissent was one that was prohibited by Canon Law. You cannot ordain bishops without a papal mandate. Father Kung’s dissent carries a different set of consequences according to the law. He was stripped of his license to teach as a Catholic theologian. That was the area of his dissent. When it comes to the exercise of priestly ministry, the man has not violated any laws that would strip him of a canonical place in the Church. Teaching theology is not a canonical role.

Then you have softer disagreements that are not at the level of those of Father Kung. These are the disagreements on certain points of doctrine, moral theology, liturgy, pastoral practices, and law. However, these disagreements are not serious enough to warrant the loss of a right or a privilege. At best, the Holy See views them as worthy of a slap on the wrist. The man in the pew may say that Father N playing a guitar during mass is an abuse. The Holy See looks at it and says, "It is inappropriate and not allowed by the rubrics, but there is a difference between violating the rubrics or disagreeing with the rubrics and abuse. Be that as it may,** to the authorities in the Church this is not dissent, but disagreement, disobedience, immaturity, silliness, or self-indulgence. It still has to be corrected. But it need not be corrected with penalties.**

In essence, I believe that there are two levels of dissent. The most serious is the one that carries an automatic excommunication or at the very least a suspension. The next rung down is less serious, but carries a consequence that the hierarchy can impose at its discretion. Then there is disparity, which is not the same as dissent, because one is not denying anything. One is simply doing something or not doing something. That something is serious enough to warrant attention and correction, but not serious enough to warrant a penalty.

In secular life it would look something like this:

1. Spouse cheats — merits an excommunication from the marriage bed. No questions asked.
2. Child smokes pot – merits the loss of privileges of the higher order, whatever is most important to him.

In both cases, there are penalties.

1. Child argues with parent – there are less severe ways of teaching the child how to communicate without being argumentative. The intervention could take the form or guidance and redirection rather than a penalty. The child is failing to see the importance of a specific social skill, composure in disagreement.

Is there room then for “honest” (or sincere and not silly, immature etc) disagreement on matters of faith (not morals).

I’m asking, because yesterday I gave a talk on the Year of Faith at a teachers convention. Thousands of teachers from Catholic and Public school boards were there, yet very few came to the talk. Since the group was small I changed the format and had a discussion with the folk that turned up (all women). They were very sincere Catholics and each got emotional/teared up at different points in our discussion. None believed fully in the teachings of the Church re: married or women priests etc., etc,.

But all were deeply involved in their parishes life in various ministries, some were intentionally involved in order to mitigate what they saw as “damage” to the parish by the current pastor.

It was all very emotional and fraught, and very different from what I had planned. And not the direction I had intended to go, but I did a lot of lip biting and listening.

It made me think about “dissent” and disagreement. In fact it kept me awake for a while last night.

 

[JReducation]

Is there room then for “honest” (or sincere and not silly, immature etc) disagreement on matters of faith (not morals).

Yes there is, even in the area of morality. Remember, moral law is objective, not subjective. That’s a whole other $20.

Allow me to give an example.

The Holy Father declared that the Church does not have the authority to ordain women.

The very sincere and faithful Catholic may say, “I don’t see how the Church does not have such authority. After all, the Church can bind and unbind.”

He’s expressing a disagreement with the Holy Father’s statement. He’s making an honest statement. This is not dissent.

Dissent would be if he taught the contrary. Dissent would be if he taught his students that what the Holy Father says is wrong or false and that what he or she believes is correct.

But he simply says it as I have said it above, he’s not dissenting. He’s stating the policy of the Church and expressing his difficulty with it. He has to be very careful to express his difficulty with said policy in an environment where the audience understands the difference. It’s not the kind of statement that should be made in a CCD class or an RCIA class. To do so is irresponsible, because your audience is not at the level where they can understand that you can have an opinion of your own and still humbly submit to the authority of the Church.

The key word is “submit”.

I do not like female altar servers. That’s my opinion. The Church says that they may be used. I have no authority to tell others that female altar servers are wrong. I must submit to what the Church says.

The Church says that girls can be altar servers. She has not said that I have to like it.

On the other hand, prudence tells me that I don’t share this opinion too widely, because someone is going to quote it and try to use it against the Church.

If I express this opinion on my blog, on CAF, in my lectures, in my classes, in every conversation, then it’s no longer just a disagreement. It’s dissent. I know the law regarding this subject. I have no right to undermine the law or to try to upstage the hierarchy with my superior knowledge of what should and should not be.

Can you see the difference between dissent and difference of opinion?

 

[Lormar]

Can anyone join in this conversation or is it just between Brother Jay and Triumphguy?

Just wanted to say that I am tired of all of the labels hyphenated with the word Catholic as well.

 

[Zekariya]

Just wanted to say that I am tired of all of the labels hyphenated with the word Catholic as well.

Your religion tag says that you are a Roman Catholic. That’s a bit hypocritical. Just kidding.

I have quite enjoyed reading this thread. The dialogue that you and Br JR have here in this thread is quite a gem.

 

[Lormar]

I am sure you know exactly what I meant.

 

[triumphguy]

Can you see the difference between dissent and difference of opinion?

Yes, that’s clear; thanks for that explanation.

So one can listen to disagreement - and often there’s some kind of pain mixed up in it - (as I did yesterday). There was healing involved in the process too since all the participants said how they felt it was right that had been there… because we had been seeking the face of Christ.

It’s interesting how disagreement often involves pain…

And how the healing comes from Christ.

 

[spartan_cop]

Yes there is, even in the area of morality. Remember, moral law is objective, not subjective. That’s a whole other $20.

Allow me to give an example.

The Holy Father declared that the Church does not have the authority to ordain women.

The very sincere and faithful Catholic may say, “I don’t see how the Church does not have such authority. After all, the Church can bind and unbind.”

He’s expressing a disagreement with the Holy Father’s statement. He’s making an honest statement. This is not dissent.

Dissent would be if he taught the contrary. Dissent would be if he taught his students that what the Holy Father says is wrong or false and that what he or she believes is correct.

But he simply says it as I have said it above, he’s not dissenting. He’s stating the policy of the Church and expressing his difficulty with it. He has to be very careful to express his difficulty with said policy in an environment where the audience understands the difference. It’s not the kind of statement that should be made in a CCD class or an RCIA class. To do so is irresponsible, because your audience is not at the level where they can understand that you can have an opinion of your own and still humbly submit to the authority of the Church.

The key word is “submit”.

I do not like female altar servers. That’s my opinion. The Church says that they may be used. I have no authority to tell others that female altar servers are wrong. I must submit to what the Church says.

The Church says that girls can be altar servers. She has not said that I have to like it.

On the other hand, prudence tells me that I don’t share this opinion too widely, because someone is going to quote it and try to use it against the Church.

If I express this opinion on my blog, on CAF, in my lectures, in my classes, in every conversation, then it’s no longer just a disagreement. It’s dissent. I know the law regarding this subject. I have no right to undermine the law or to try to upstage the hierarchy with my superior knowledge of what should and should not be.

Can you see the difference between dissent and difference of opinion?

Very interesting, this opened up my eyes on a lot of things.

 

[Zekariya]

I am sure you know exactly what I meant.

Yes, I do. That is why I said, “Just kidding.” I was joking. I am apologize if I didn’t make myself clear.

 

[JReducation]

Very interesting, this opened up my eyes on a lot of things.

It’s a fine line, but a very important fine line. It is one thing to disagree with a prudential decision of the hierarchy. It is quite another to teach what one believes and suggest that others adopt it in place of what the hierarchy has to say. To do the latter goes beyond having an opinion. It is dissent.

In the constitutions of my community, we have a clause that protects the brothers from falling into dissent. It’s a long clause, but basically it says that no brother is ever allowed to publicly express any opinion or say anything that is contrary to what the bishop or the Holy Father says. It does not say that the brother has to agree. It simply says that he keeps his opinions out of the public sector. Then the clause continues to command the brothers to put distance between themselves and their opinions in favor of those expressed by the hierarchy. That’s the second part of this deal. This is the assent.

There are different kinds of assent. All Catholics have a moral duty to assent to lawful authority, regardless of one’s opinion.

Here again, we go back to the Holy Father’s thoughts on the Council. We have to assent to the Council of the Fathers as he calls it, not to the council of the media, which is a different way of saying the Council of Opinions. Everyone has one of those. However, those opinions are not binding on any Catholic. The opinions of the Council are binding, because they come from lawful authority. That’s where he’s coming from.

The Holy Father is trying to help his audience discriminate between lawful authority and unlawful authority. A person or group that expresses an opinion which they do not have the right to express is an unlawful authority. Anyone can have an opinion, but no one can state his opinion as authoritative, unless it’s consistent with that of the Pope and bishops. Even the Doctors of the Church were very careful here.

Aquinas, Anthony, Bonaventure, Bellarmine, Lawrence, etc never say that their positions are authoritative. WE assign authority to their writings. Sometimes, we assign authority that the Church has not assigned. Just because it comes from a Doctor does not make it authoritative. The Doctor may be an authority in his field, but he is not writing as an ecclesiastical authority. His statements are opinions until the Magisterium formally adopts them.

In the case of a Council, the same is true. A Council has the authority to make statements to the Church and about the Church. The Church is bound to comply, unless the pope overrules the Council. Even then, the pope can only overrule the Council on points that are not doctrinal or moral.

This is one of the great confusions that people have regarding the Council of Trent and the Tridentine Form of the Mass. The Council’s decree was a legal one, not a doctrinal or moral one. The Council decreed a law that was binding until it was repealed by someone who had the authority to do so.

When the Council said that the mass was to retain that form in perpetuity, it was correct in that the Council did not foresee the possibility of a future pope changing the form. The Council never said that this is a dogma, because it’s not.

Some who subscribe to Trent’s position on this point and other points that are not dogmas or moral laws, are doing the same as those who subscribe to the Council of the Media. These persons are subscribing to the Council of Opinion. Because someone or some people believe that everything that Trent said is binding until the Second Coming, does not make it so, unless the Council itself or the pope say so.

The laws and positions are binding only until another council or pope comes along. In other words, law and disciplines can and do change. However, they must change according to the mind of legitimate authority, not the interpretation of those who do not understand what they’re seeing or hearing. We cannot assign authority to the person doing the interpreting, unless he has a commission from the Church to speak for the Church.

 

[Eufrosnia]

I found this very powerful, because he is clarifying that all religions are not the same. There is only one Revelation. However, one cannot deny that there is such a thing as religious experience, which people of different faiths have.

He also seems to point out that there is a need to share (talk about) our religious experiences, but this requires that we be willing to listen to those of others too. This is a first step.

I think what most people miss is that since this “religious experience” is common to all of humanity regardless of religion, it is a big error to keep stressing it as the most important factor in choosing a religion.

God gives religious experiences to all so that they will remember that there is something more than their natural lives. But to know what that something is, one must use reason to discover when, where and through whom God has revealed himself.

The reason we have so many different regions (and even sects within Christianity) is because no one bothers to ask who the authority regarding divine revelation should be. They just assent to the first person who “makes sense” to them with respect to the revelation they present. They don’t bother to see if it makes sense to even think whether that particular individual has divine revelation in the first place.

Sad side of this today is that many Catholics have started to emphasize the religious experience as the compass for picking a faith. All a Catholic needs to do is point out that religious experiences, while great, do not tell you which religion you must choose. It just does not logically follow. Of course, this will “make mad” the Protestants and even some Catholics but it is high time we pointed out what is unreasonable.

 

[YoungTradCath]

I think what most people miss is that since this “religious experience” is common to all of humanity regardless of religion, it is a big error to keep stressing it as the most important factor in choosing a religion.

God gives religious experiences to all so that they will remember that there is something more than their natural lives. But to know what that something is, one must use reason to discover when, where and through whom God has revealed himself.

The reason we have so many different regions (and even sects within Christianity) is because no one bothers to ask who the authority regarding divine revelation should be. They just assent to the first person who “makes sense” to them with respect to the revelation they present. They don’t bother to see if it makes sense to even think whether that particular individual has divine revelation in the first place.

Sad side of this today is that many Catholics have started to emphasize the religious experience as the compass for picking a faith. All a Catholic needs to do is point out that religious experiences, while great, do not tell you which religion you must choose. It just does not logically follow. Of course, this will “make mad” the Protestants and even some Catholics but it is high time we pointed out what is unreasonable.

I can’t decide if the religious experience is simply an emotional ecstasy sometimes experienced by all those of faith, or whether it is something sent by God. I tend to believe more the former, because would God give someone a good experience that simply serves to strengthen him in his, for example, Islamic faith? I don’t think so, that’s kind of counterintuitive.

 

[Eufrosnia]

I can’t decide if the religious experience is simply an emotional ecstasy sometimes experienced by all those of faith, or whether it is something sent by God. I tend to believe more the former, because would God give someone a good experience that simply serves to strengthen him in his, for example, Islamic faith? I don’t think so, that’s kind of counterintuitive.

I would say that God gives experiences to all so that they may realize there is something greater than the natural world. For those who have not yet found revelation, it is meant to get them to search for it while for those who have already found it, it helps them grow in to a more personal relationship.

The error of non-Christians is that they tend to lift this experience as some validation of their religion when it makes zero logical sense from that perspective. One cannot confirm if they have divine revelation by a religious experience. With non-Catholics (and even many Catholics), you have those who completely base their religious precepts on a “personal experience with Christ”. That too is is problematic because the precepts are suppossed to be accepted first. You cannot know which precepts to accept after having a personal experience. The precepts themselves, like “who or which church is the authority”, “which book is the word of God” must be first arrived at through history and reason.

So the way I see it, God is trying to help people out by giving them experiences. They are acting in such an unreasonable way that they are clinging instead to error.

 

[JReducation]

The Franciscan Doctors unanimously agree that there is true religious experience outside of Catholicism. God wants nothing more than to save man. God makes himself known and felt even if it’s in shadows. The fact that Islam discovered the one true God is not an accident. It is God’s desire to make himself known to all men. This is not a question in Catholic Mystical Theology.

Just as God makes himself known to sinful Catholics he also makes himself known to sinful non-Catholics. Just as non-Catholics can fail to follow where the religious experience naturally leads, so do many Catholics. Just as non-Catholics do not understand what they experience, even though they know that it’s a transcendent experience, so too Catholics do not always understand.

St. Anthony of Padua would always tell the brothers that they should never believe that they were special because they were Catholic. Being Catholic placed a heavy burden on their shoulders, because more was given to them than to non-Catholics. The language that we use today is different from that used by Sts. Anthony, Lawrence, and Bonaventure. Their language was more elaborate and their explanations were longer. I’ve shortened it for the benefit of this post.

If one wants to understand religious experience, the best work to read is the Journey Into the Mind of God by St. Bonaventure (Itinerarium). Bonaventure describes the totality of the religious experience in about 300 pages and concludes that God makes it available to all men of good will to different degrees. It is up to the soul to choose to follow.

If we take this with what the Church teaches about Revelation, we know that God has revealed himself to non-Catholics as well as Catholics. We know that the fullness of revelation is to be found in the Church of Jesus Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church. We know that every man has a moral duty to God and to himself to follow truth which is revealed to him, no matter how small. It is this revelation and response that St. Bonaventure coins as the journey. In Church teaching, we know that the journey leads to Christ and to full communion with his Church.

No one begins the journey without a religious experience. We must separate religious experience from mystical experience. Mystical experience is a religious experience, but it is the privilege of a very select minority. However, God’s self-disclosure and the grace to respond to it is a religious experience available to all men to different degrees.