Capitalizing on Conversion

I should preface this post with the disclaimer that I think it is a wonderful thing that converts to Catholicism are writing and helping create a vibrant community of Catholics excited about faith and evangelism. The growth of this community is a testament to the many people who are finding themselves disenchanted with the shallow ritualism (secular or otherwise) and false and destructive dogmatism by which they have been inundated for most of their lives.

Still, one of the troubling aspects about this movement is the development of what I’m calling the “Catholic Market”. It is the new niche market that has been created primarily around Protestant converts to Catholicism who, once fiery Evangelicals or staunch atheists, have found their home in Mother Church. But they have also found that there exists a certain constituency of buyers willing to consume products ranging from books to curriculum.

Now, is this such a bad thing in itself? A group of people wanting to buy Catholic products and a small group of authors willing to provide them? No, of course not. But the problem that I foresee developing is precisely the same problem that exists in the modern “Contemporary Christian Industry”—you know, the same industry that brought us “Family Christian Bookstores” and the really terrible music that plays on KLOVE and KCMS. The problem is the desire to capitalize on faith along with ability to make a profit from what essentially boils down to another “life choice” amidst the millions of others that exist in contemporary society.

This kind of industry has admittedly already existed for a long time in the Evangelical world: How do you measure success? How do you ‘reach the world?’ You attempt to create a really hip “Christian” product, one that imitates all “cool stuff” in the “secular realm”. Instead of artistic innovation, Evangelicals tend to try and “redeem” all the captivating (but worldly!) stuff that’s already happening contemporary culture. How do we make worship cooler? We write worship songs that sound like Radiohead. How do we legitimize the Christian faith in a sea of other faiths and beliefs in culture? We write a bunch of hot books and market them on twitter.

It may be the case, then, that many of the evangelical Protestants converting to Catholicism have brought their understanding of ministry with them. A Protestant convert does what he or she knows best; validate their own faith-decision by amassing thousands of like-minded people to agree with them. Think about it: how does a Protestant pastor know that he is successful? By how many attendees they have on Sunday, of course. How does a Christian rock star know that God is “really using her music”? By selling double platinum records, obviously. So how does the Protestant convert to Catholicism know that they are on the right path? Well, since they can’t start their own church’s, and since there exists (at this point, anyway) no substantial Catholic music industry, their best shot is to become authors or bloggers. And that’s exactly what is happening.

The problem here is a distinctly capitalistic one (Weber would say a distinctly Protestant one): As soon as a market discovered, it is exploited. Huge amounts of content is produced to fill the demand, and it inevitably happens that the content being produced loses actual value, kind of like food is made with cheaper and cheaper ingredients to make the most profit for the least amount of expenses. This is just what happens in our consumer economy: We look for a demand, and once we find it, we figure out ways to optimally exploit that demand to create revenue. But it often happens that such an “optimal exploitation” involves a watering down or total distortion of the original thing or idea we are trying to sell.

I’m not saying that all mass-production is bad, or that making money in the context of ministry is bad either. The former can actually be a really good thing, like in the case of production of raw materials, and the latter is virtually necessary for the propitiation of certain ministries that continue to proclaim the gospel and do works of charity.

But until recently, it seems to me that Catholicism has not been something neatly packaged into a four-volume set you can pick up on Amazon. Sure, there have always been religious orders—monks and nuns—and some opportunistic business men and women who have tried to earn their bread by selling Catholic-y things like rosaries, icons etc., but what’s the medieval equivalent of EWTN or the collective of emerging Catholic blogging rock stars (each with a book to sell!)? Who are their historical analogues?

I reiterate: I do not think that it is inherently bad that a kind of “Catholic market” exists or is even developing. EWTN and various Catholic publishing companies prove to be invaluable resources for not just Catholics but anyone seeking information or instruction. But when do we, as Catholic writers, producers, or businesspeople, cross the line from adding value to the Church, to adding value to our own pocketbooks? When does a testimony transform into a narrative that can be monetized?

Maybe I just don’t want to see the Catholic equivalent of the “Christian Music Industry”. I dread that Catholicism might be enveloped into a consumer economy that defiles everything within it. But it seems the only way to keep this from happening is to remember the universality of the Catholic faith—it is not and has never been something consigned to a specific “market”. Catholicism cannot be reduced to a genre; it is a genre-creator— it is not capitalized on, it creates capital.

‘truly entired’: some thoughts on ritual and worship

The other day, someone passed along to me this excerpt from a poem by W.H. Auden:

“When Norsemen heard thunder,
did they seriously believe
Thor was hammering?

No, I’d say: I’d swear
that men have always lounged in myths
as Tall Stories,

that their real earnest
has been to grant excuses
for ritual actions.

Only in rites
can we renounce our oddities
and be truly entired.”

It’s from a poem called “Archaeology,” written in 1973 (the same year Auden died). What struck me about it was how handily it sums up contemporary academic theories of ritual — as sociologists have widely come to recognize the primary role of ritual action in religion since maybe the mid-90s. Auden beat the academics to the punch by at least two decades¹; funny what being a practicing religious believer will do for your insight into religious practice.

What the poem critiques first is the older rationalist theory which saw mythologies and rituals as basically explanatory devices. It’s the definition of myth that we were given in grade school: the Norsemen (or Indians, or Israelites, or Africans) couldn’t understand natural events because they didn’t have Science, and so they created this colorful and rather illogical story to “explain” how it happened. Even as a kid, this scheme seemed suspect to me. My experience reading the Old Testament as a believer made me sense that when ancient people told stories about gods or spirits, they were dealing with more than their curiosity about how the tiger got its stripes. Surely it was possible that the millions of people in the world who lived before the invention of empirical science might have been less interested than we are in finding out “how” things happen.² The stories themselves had a much deeper imaginative resonance.

Sociologists today generally agree that such a reductionist understanding of myth and ritual is inadequate. Ritual, in particular, is no longer seen as something extrinsic to religious belief, something “added on” to a core set of doctrines to help explain or remind us of our beliefs. So far as that goes, then, Auden was right to suspect the explanations of a rationalist cultural anthropology.

“The Pilgrimage to Gößweinstein,” Rudolf Schiestl

Then what about his other suggestion: that our “real earnest” is ritual action, which “entires” us?

This spring, I’ve been chewing over Robert Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution (2011), which essentially argues that it was ritual that created our capacity for religious belief, not the other way around. If he is right, ritual action and the ability to participate in ritual is at the center of our experience of God and the key to what makes us different from the rest of creation.³

Now, because if I were to talk to my grandparents about the importance of “rituals” in Christian life, I would face a lot of consternation, I should assure you that “ritual” is not just a smelly, smokey thing that Catholics do in dimly lit churches. Our lives are filled with rituals of different kinds and degrees, none of which threaten the sincerity of our relationship with God. There are rituals for school and work, for riding the bus, for going to the mall, and for the ways we play, even aside from the traditional rituals we use to celebrate holidays or mark special times in our lives. It’s often hard for us to even imagine what life is like stripped of certain rituals: try and celebrate Christmas without any of your favorite traditions‡, maybe in a tropical part of the globe, and no matter how many times you remind yourself of the reason for the season, you might have the nagging sense that, this year, “Christmas” (as you know it, as it really is) never happened at all.

Ritual is a kind of collective social action, but (contrary to “Protestant” strand of interpretation†) it doesn’t have to obscure the meaning contained inside it. Meaning isn’t really contained within ritual at all (as if societies invented rituals the way you create a Powerpoint presentation to go along with your report — adding in some pictures and pretty backgrounds to tempt the less attentive). It is not the packaging that just symbolizes the idea inside. Rather, ritual enacts meaning, and the people involved in the ritual may not be able to understand what it is they are doing until after they have done it (or better, “made it”). Trying to come up with a discursive (logical, expressive) meaning might not even be possible, or desirable, at all. Maybe it’s unsettling to think that the most important, the most human, things that we do are things that we can’t “express;” for others, it’s more threatening to suggest that even the things that we do seemingly by instinct, “without thinking,” still carry a meaning and form the way we live, interact, and worship.

“Hearing Mass,” José Benlliure y Gil

So what does this mean for me? Well, I’ll go back to Auden’s description of ritual as something that makes us “entire.” One of the most obvious things about ritual is that it is something “acted out,” usually physically. The satisfaction of kneeling, bowing, eating, and drinking is that, in the context of the rite, they are actions that speak for themselves. And as you do the kneeling or the eating, as you become a participant in the ritual, it becomes completely clear that you didn’t make up this language on your own: like any living language, ritual only becomes real in community.

For those of us who grew up in Christian traditions that devalued the idea (and, so far as they could, the practice) of ritual, this is something new and different. The worshiping community is no longer understood as a collection of individuals expressing an inner experience, though expressing it all in one place and under the direction of an especially talented expresser-performer. Instead, the worshiping community receives its words and its actions from someone else — handed down by the Church throughout time — and enacts them. By enacting rather than expressing, the horizon of worship widens out again and we don’t have to be suffocated by subjectivity, which, for me, meant being anxious that I was not feeling the right things at the right time in order to authentically express them. Worship understood as ritual action has a different goal. It exercises the most human parts of us: not just our ability to express and reason, but our ability to intend, act, play, and experience the world on multiple levels. It swallows us “entire.”

I hope I’ll be able to write more about my forays into ritual studies, because it’s a fascinating subject and I’ve only scratched the surface.

¹ Although, in fairness, Huizinga’s Homo Ludens was published in 1938, and was really a major forerunner of ritual studies, explaining culture (including its religious aspects) as a form of play, and claiming that “play is older than culture.” Huizinga was a medievalist, so I am eager to give him his due.
² We are the only society that has really enshrined the task of “explaining how” with all the trappings of a religious conviction.
³ My 50-word hack summary of a magisterial 700-page work I haven’t finished reading yet.
† I’m following terminology used in Ritual and Its Consequences (Seligman, Weller, Puett, and Simon, 2008).
‡ Personally, I don’t understand how anyone can claim to have celebrated Christmas unless they watch the 1990 animated feature “The Nutcracker Prince.”

“Behold, your mother.”

Music and, more recently, film have ever wielded the power to sway our hearts well before our minds become aware of the ruse. This power is subtle, yet it often grips us with tremendous force. This power can be abused, but it can also serve as the impetus for bridging that great chasm between our heads and our hearts. One such instance of that power may be glimpsed in the above scene from The Hobbit.

As you may know, J. R. R. Tolkien was a devout Catholic. He inserted a great deal of religious symbolism into his work, both overtly and subconsciously. One character that exhibits this symbolism is the Lady Galadriel. Writing to a close friend, Tolkien confirmed that Galadriel is imbued with his own understanding of  the Virgin Mary’s character:

I think I know exactly what you mean by the order of Grace; and of course by your references to Our Lady, upon which all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded.

In this scene from The Hobbit, we are presented with an opportunity to step outside of our preconceptions about the Mother of God. We see a portrayal of beauty, “both in majesty and simplicity.” We see the tenderness and compassion of a loving mother, as she gently embraces Gandalf’s weak and fearful hands. We see a faithfulness that inspires hope.

We can see Mary as our own mother, guiding us lovingly towards hope in her son. In John’s gospel, Jesus bestows his mother upon us as he hung dying on the cross:

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

It is for this reason that she is oftentimes referred to as the “Mother of All the Living.” And for this reason that we can turn to her as we would turn to our own mothers. We can hold out our own fearful hands, confident that our Blessed Mother will lovingly intercede for us at the feet of her son.

Let us, then, turn to Mary with the assurance that her loving petitions will be heard by her son, our Lord:

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided.

Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me.

Amen.

Sede Vacante

The chair of Peter is vacant, but this in no way means that the Church has no head. The head of the Church has been, and will always be, Christ Jesus, our Lord. This period of Papal vacancy reminds Catholics of an important truth: that it is Christ who leads His Church – it is the Holy Spirit who guides Her.

We also must remember that it is Christ who commissioned his apostles to go into the world. It is Chist who, through his commissioning, gave the apostles the power to bind and loose, to admit or withhold forgiveness. It was God’s most gracious will that allowed for a visible Church with a living head, and that through this head there may be greater unity in the vast and universal Church.

It is only with this truth in mind that we look upon the vacant chair as both a hope and a promise: A hope that the chair will once again be filled by a righteous servant who will guide Christ’s Church in obedience, wisdom and humility, and a promise that whomever takes the chair will be guided by none other than the Holy Spirit Himself to preserve the unity and power of Christ’s Holy Bride.

It is with this hope and promise that we can more clearly understand the resignation of Benedict XVI . His stepping down was an act of faith demonstrating that even though he would relinquish his power, Christ’s power in the Church is never relinquished.

Let us pray for our now Pope emeritus that he may faithfully serve the Church in his new capacity, and also for the upcoming Pope that he may be able to lead Christs’s Church through this time of great tribulation.

I’ve discovered that there is a lot of freedom in Catholic Social Teaching (CST) than I previously realized.  To have someone else already have gone through the effort of citing chapter and verse from the Bible and investigate cultural context and compare that against the vast body of Christian moral action through all the ages and already having done so with an Authority that I can trusty wholly in, frees me significantly to simply live it.  I don’t find myself plagued into inaction by my own lack of understanding and biblical scholarships and therefore doubting the moral fiber of my conclusions.  I can listen and obey and in that bring God’s kingdom to earth and grow in holiness.

That everyone should be given what they are due, and that due is somewhat in excess to their basic needs of survival, frees me from the great confusion that is the American political system.  I don’t have to ask anymore which policy is better overall because of economic concerns.  I am freed to ask of any budget “does this meet the standard set by the Church of supplying each their due?”

That people have inherent dignity and we should not value one person over another through our personal or corporate actions.  I am free to ask questions of policies like Affirmative Action “does this policy value minority people more than other peoples?” or “does this policy effectively work to end the undervaluing of minority peoples ?” rather than ask, “is this and effective means to combat minority under-eduction?” or “is this racist?”  Effectiveness and racism are poor standards to follow when the inherent dignity of a person because of their status of being made in the Image and Likeness of God is equally present.

All in all, I’m thankful that someone else (meaning hundreds or thousands of others) has taken the time (meaning thousands of academic and theological debate and application) and trouble (meaning martyrdom) to give me a pretty clear moral code to hold my personal life and my society’s life up against and to try to implement to protect the dignity of others.  I’m pretty happy to be in RCIA right now and I cannot wait for Easter.

Christ-like Forgiveness

As you know, all of Christianity is wrapped around this idea of forgiveness–even non-Christians know that Jesus’ death was for the forgiveness of sins. But really, the Christian idea of forgiveness goes much deeper than that. Suppose you’re standing at the gate of Heaven and see someone sitting at the banquet table who you would not sit next to, or whom you have a grudge, or even who you suspect has a grudge against you. You might need to step away and find that person and reconcile. You can’t sit at the banquet table and bring your dispute (or even so much as an awkward silence) to such a celebration. Because there will be no rivalry, no bitterness in Heaven–there won’t even be such a thing as one person disliking another. We will see each other for who we were made to be–unique, loving individuals.

So, haste should be made in reaching mutual reconciliation: Matthew 5:23-24.

Matthew 18:21-35 takes this even further, and after that last sentence of Jesus’ wisdom, one has to wonder: is a prerequisite to our entrance into Heaven the complete forgiveness to those who have wronged us?

But it’s fairly obvious: how can one enter into Heaven without a heart like Christ’s: that heart of Christ’s which would die for the betrayals and backstabbings of billions of selfish human beings? How would you sit at the banquet table if Jesus asked you to sit next to the one whom you dislike–or perhaps have more deeply-rooted feelings than a shallow disliking? God knows your heart better than you do. If, right now, you can think of a person whom you wouldn’t talk to or sit by at Heaven’s banquet table, then you might not be ready for Heaven’s banquet table.

But I don’t know who will be there. Only God has the guest list. You may find yourself surprised at who you see. But the best way to be prepared is to forgive those who have wronged you, seek forgiveness for your wrongs, and do everything in your power to bridge each relationship in your life with the openness, trust, and love that Christ gives us–we are called to imitate him, after all.

Love, love, love your enemies–whether they deserve it or not. It is the only way to reconcile with them. If you can think of a single person you dislike, distrust, or would rather not talk to, then you had better talk to them. Be honest. And prepare yourself to become that person’s best friend–just as Christ became our very best friend.

Many years ago, a mentor of mine once told me: “Imitating Christ is like this: that every time you meet a new person, from the moment you shake their hand, your heart, mind, and will are prepared to become that person’s best friend. Whether that person is cruel, rude, needy, disabled, dishonest, or simply plain and uninteresting, none of that matters. What matters is that your love for them transcends prejudices, judgments, and wrongdoing.”

So: love your enemies. Love strangers. Love everyone. God called everyone into an eternal and substantive friendship with him; so, choose everyone for friendship with you.

“The Devil is not in our books! He is in our hearts!”  (Reverend Moore, Footloose)

Growing up in Christian circles there was a subtle stigma against the evils of “technology.”  It was a distraction from God, prayer, serving your neighbor, etc.  Cell phones, iPods, etc are prohibited from retreats and pastors often encourage the congregation to “unplug” in order to hear the voice of God.

Let me be the first to say “Yes, Yes!” to any pastor who encourages his congregation to look for God and separate themselves from distractions.  We as humans tend to walk through life looking at the dirt, at whatever is on the ground right in front of us.  Sometimes God lets us walk into things which hurts for the time being but is no more evil when their child runs into a lamppost because he is bent over texting a cute girl.  In both cases, we tend to look up and take stock of our surroundings (sometimes discovering that God or that cute girl is within sight and we never would have known).   But to say it is entirely technology’s fault is ignoring the fact that there is a girl on the other end of the phone and a drive inside of that child to be attractive to her.

Technology is merely a means to our own ends.  It enables us to purse our own various passions.  When an unfaithful man neglected his family two hundred years ago, to pursue his own passions or interests, he went from work to the racetrack, or the pub, or the theater.  Today, he will come home after work.  But he won’t really be at home.  You will still find his heart at the racetrack, or the pub, or the theater as he vegges in front of the TV, or computer, or Xbox.  In the former case, would you blame the man or the places where he frequented?  Is his unfaithfulness to his family the theater’s fault?  No, of course not!  You would blame man for being too caught up in what does not matter and hope that he would learn choose what matters more.  So, too, with the latter.  It is a character flaw.

What we have run into is not technology’s inherent ability to distract from focus on our Lord.  What we have run into is our inherent desire for things that aren’t Him.

The reason behind its absolute propensity to take over peoples’ lives is two-fold.  First, our individualistic society allows people to make their own decisions.  Not a bad idea in its own right, but when obsession is being manifest in a person their friends and family (namely parents) either just do not possess the moral hutzpa to prevent it or they themselves are too distracted by their obsessions to prevent that in their children.  A practical example of the sins of fathers resting on their children.  The second reason is like the first, and that is we have been taught that the pursuit of our passions is rightly placed as the first priority in our lives because that will make us most happy.  Consumer technology is merely a means to our happiness, and a particularity attainable means to that end, so why change our behavior?

The very reason why we have improved our ability to do tasks (i.e. Technology) is so that we can accomplish what we want to do more easily, or to fulfill the dreams our imagination, things that were previously impossible to do.  Technology exists to accomplish man’s goals.  If our goals are to talk to a pretty girl, follow the latest sports news, do business, or learn more about our Christ, technology makes it easier to do so and to do so more efficiently.

“The Devil is not in our books!  He’s in our hearts!”

(Reverend Moore, Footloose)

The Devil is not in the theater, not in the pub, not in the races.  He is not in our TV, our internet, or our games.  The Devil is not in our phones.  He is in us, turning our focus away from those we should love and towards useless pursuits.  If we find ourselves running into lampposts, we can hardly blame the phone in our hands.

So let us go forward in the freedom of Christ, to avoid whatever leads us to sin and strike a blow to our bodies in discipline so as to render us more perfect servants of Christ.

Catholicism as “Capitalist”

A recent article posted over at Vox-Nova linking to Ivan Kauffman’s piece, “After Ideology” brings in to focus some of the issues that I have been meaning to point out over what I see as the “politicizing” within the USCCB. I agree with Julia Smucker when says in the Vox-Nova combox:

…Catholicism is not supposed to be an ideological group. It’s the alternative to ideology.

This video, featuring the Bishop Fr Robert Sirico speaking on the compatibility of Catholicism and Capitalism, is a wonderful example of kind of harmful ideological affiliating I am trying to point out.

If the bishops aren’t explicit about the fact that no political/economic system can accomplish what the Church is commissioned to accomplish, political factionalism within the USCCB and subsequently within the laity become inevitable.

Granted, upon a more thorough examination of Fr Sirico’s project I don’t think he is saying that Catholics need to endorse a kind of neo-liberal economic policy, full-stop. Again, I don’t think it would be bad even if he did. The advocacy of certain economic/political schemas become dangerous when they are justified as being Catholic economic policies or Catholic political schemas. Neo-liberalism is not Catholic. Neither is communism, neither is any other economic system. We may have reasons to say that such-and-such a system can be justified by a Catholic moral framework in certain instances, and we have even more liberty to denounce systems like National Socialism that cause obvious evil and harm (as the Third Reich certainly did) based on Catholic principles. But to say that a “good Catholic” is one who subscribes to this or that ideology? Let that be anathema!