Spring 1973

CHICAGO

STUDIES

EDITORIAL STAFF

Editor George J. Dyer

Associate Editor

Business Manager

John F. Dedek

Richard J. Wojcik

Executive Assistant

Production Manager

Marjorie M. Lukas

Edmund J. Siedlecki

Editorial Advisors Joseph A. Bracken, S.J. Gerard T. Broccolo Agnes Cunningham, sscm

James P. Doyle John F. Fahey John R. Gorman Willard F. Jabusch Edward H. Konerman, S.J.

Thomas B. McDonough Mary Peter McGinty, C.S.J. Charles R. Meyer Joseph J. O'Brien Richard F. Schroeder Edward J. Stokes, S.J. Thomas F. Sullivan ¡

CHICAGO STUDIES is edited by the faculty of St. l\!ary of the Lake Seminary and the priests of the Archdiocese of Chicago for the continuing education of the clergy. The editors welcome articles and letters likely to be of interest to our readers. All communications regarding articles and editorial policy should be addressed to the editors.

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VOLUME 12

SPRING, 1973

NUMBER 1

Articles THE GENERAL CA7ECHETICAL DIRECTORY IN FocUS

3

AN APPROACH TO PASTORAL THEOLOGY

15

John J. Shea

TAXATION AND THE NEW ECONOMICS

29

John F. Dedek

CONFLICT, ANGER AND GROWTH IN THE CHURCH

39

William G. Thompson, S.J.

CATHOLIC ABSENTEEISM: FACT AND FUTURE

47

ThomaR Sweetser, S.J.

SACRAMENTAL RECONCILIATION: ACT OF WORSHIP OR COUNSELLING EXPERIENCE?

57

IS THIS THE SAME CHURCH?

69

Terence E. Tierney Gerald F. Kreyche

THE POST-WAR YEARS

77

Paul J. Weber

THE POSSESSION PROBLEM: OR EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT EXORCISM BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK

91

Richard J. Woods, O.P.

AUTHORS

109

Thomas F. Sullivan

DANIEL BERRIGAN : POLITICAL THEOLOGY IN

OuR CoVER:

"Madonna" by Ferenc Varga through the courtesy of

the National Sculpture Review, 250 East 51st St., N.Y., N.Y. 10022

Thomas F. SuUivan

The General Caiechetical Directory In Focus

Contemporary catechists, as well as their opponents, are appealing to the General Catechetical directOr'IJ. Priests will not be able to escape the cont?¡oversy.

For all engaged in the catechetical apostolate, the publication of the Geneml Catechetical Directory by the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy was an event of major proportions.

The GCD was published in Latin on Easter Sunday of 1971, but the English translation was not released until nearly the end of that year. At this writing approximately 100,000 copies of the English version have been distributed. The American Bishops recent document, Basic Teachings fm¡ Catholic ReligiOJtS Education, is not only based largely on the doctrinal section of the Directory, but the bishops insist that their document "be read in the light of the General Catechetical Directory, by which its admittedly limited scope can readily be understood."

There are already abundant signs that both those favoring contemporary practice in religious education as well as those 3

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bitterly opposed will be appealing to the Directory for justification of their positions. Priests who are in any way involved with Catholic schools or CCD programs will inevitably find themselves in the middle of the controversy and would be well advised to acquaint themselves thoroughly with the content, purpose and spirit of this document. The present at1:icle attempts to summarize and put in focus some of the basic issues raised in the Directory.

WHY A CATECHETICAL DIRECTORY

To insure the promulgation of its conclusions, the Council of Trent conunissioned the production of a theological source book on which subsequent catechetical texts were to be based.

This document was published in 1566 and became popularly known as the Roman Catechism. Similarly, Vatican Council I ordered a universal brief ca~hism to be written for the entire Catholic world. It is a distinct tribute to the pastoral sensitivity of the fathers of Vatican Council II that they resisted the temptation to issue a single catechism for the entire world but chose rather to commission the production of a catechetical directory which would provide a broad and general orientation for religious educators while leaving ample room for local modification and adaptation. They realized that in view of the vastly different cultural and pastoral conditions in various parts of the Church, it was no longer desirable or even possible to write one catechism which would answer the needs of every part of the Catholic world.

John Cardinal Wright, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy said in a press conference promulgating the document: "The basic purpose of the Directory is to provide an orientation for religious formation rather than to establish binding rules." The Sacred Congregation was therefore trying to set guidelines not to enact legislation. Attempts to characterize the Directory as the modern equivalent of the Syllabus of Errors or an iron fist squelching of contemporary catecheti-¡ cal developments, miss both the letter and spirit of a document which consistently emphasizes that the task of applying its general principles to the concrete situation rests with the various national hierarchies. Moreover, as we shall see, the GCD

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throughout demonstrates an admirable openness to varying theological and pedagogical viewpoints.

To say that the Directory is not law, is not to deny that it is of great importance. Guidelines of the Sacred Congregation of the Clergy are not, in the phrase of Cardinal Wright, "merely casual contributions to an unofficial dialogue." During preparation of the document, extensive consultation was held with the episcopal conferences as well as with specialists in religious education from various areas of the world. Furthermore, the GCD is based to a large extent on the teachings of Vatican Council II. Finally, it enjoys the approbation of the Holy Father. For all these reasons it deserves the greatest respect and serious study of all engaged in religious education.

THE CONTEMPORARY PROBLEM

Part I, "The Reality of the Problem," outlines some of the difficulties of preaching the Word in the modern world. Man is shaped and formed by his own culture, and the vast changes that have occurred in society in general are having their effect on the child or adult who is being catechised. Many of the cultural props which formerly reinforced religious belief and practice are being unceremoniously kicked out in a society characterized by accelerated change, secularization and religious pluralism. Consequently no amount of tinkering with the ecclesiastical machinery or even completely overhauling it will dissipate all the difficulties of communicating the good news to modern man. "The essential mission of the Church," says the GCD, "is to proclaim and promote the faith in contemporary society, a society greatly disturbed by sociocultural changes." (#1)

Today's Catholic lives in a society which is culturally, p(}litically and religiously pluralistic. All available evidence indicates that the Catholic of tomorrow will be even more attuned to the multiple ideological currents which compete for his attention and adherence. Even. if it were desirable to preserve him from his pluralistic cultural environment in the interests of "preserving the faith," such would be an impossible task.

It is in the context of pluralism that the Directory admonishes educators "never to forget that faith is a free response to the grace of the revealing God." ( #3) The same idea is re-

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peate<l more forcefully later. ( #71) Stress on the freedom of the student mirrors the sentiments of Vatican Il's Declaration on Ch1¡istian Education which states that "children have a right to be encouraged to weigh moral values with an upright conscience and to embrace them by personal choice."

The implications of the GCD's stress on the student's freedom can be painful for both parents and educators. In the past, Catholic parents who devoutly practiced their faith and sent their children to Catholic schools could be reasonably confident that their children would grow up very much like themselves, with the same religious loyalties and practices. In contemporary society such reassurances are seldom forthcoming.

As a result both parents and educators can be severly tempted tu coerce desirable religious behavior. Yet if one is to take the Directory seriously, one must perceive genuine respect for the child's freedom as integral to any authentic Christian education. Parents or teachers who attempt to frighten or otherwise manipulate students to insme their practicing the faith hurt more than they help young people. Ultimately each person must choose for himself whether he wants to be a Christian, and all schemes to compel fidelity to religion, no matter how well intentioned, are doomed to failure.

REVEI"ATION, FAITH AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Patt II, "The Ministry of the Word," deals with the critical questions of revelation, faith and catechesis. The Purpose of catechesis is to lead believers to mature faith. ( #21) Faith is a gift of God by which man accepts divine revelation. ( # 10) Obviously, then it is vital to any understanding of religious e<iucation to have a clear grasp on the meaning of revelation.

The term revelation might seem a fairly simply, univocal concept elf whose meaning all would readily agree with little discussion. As Avery Dulles has pointe<! out, however, there are at least nine characteristic forms in which men have thought of revelation fmm biblical times to our own day. (Revelation Theology, Herder & Herner, 1969, pp. 171-182). For practical reasons we shall limit our discussion to two views of revelation which have a direct bearing on the work of the contemporary catechist.

The first view sees revelation as a body of truths revealed

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7

to us by God. This body of revealed data or "deposit of faith," as it is traditionally called, was completed in apostolic times and can never be added to. Faith in this view is primat¡ily an intellectual assent to the revealed doctrines. Such an assent is based on the authority of God who is the source of these truths. This view of revelation and faith had its origin in medieval scholasticism and figured prominently in the decrees of the Council of Trent. It is the basis for the Act of Faith we learned as children in which we professed that we believed "all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them who canst neither deceive nor be deceived."

Another view of revelation and faith has become more prominent in the Church at least since the time of Vatican II. It looks at revelation as a process in which God primarily communicates Himself and not just data about Himself and his plan for man. It is a more personalistic approach and sees man's participation in this loving communion as integral to the notion of revelation. Furthermore it affit¡ms that if revelation is God communicating Himself, then it must be a continuing or ongoing process. Revelation is, therefore, not just something that happened in the distant past and is enshrined in the sacred books of antiquity. Revelation, rather, is something that is going on right now in the experience of individual Christians and in the expet¡ience of the community of believers which is the Church.

How the religious educator views revelation and faith will in large measure determine how he shapes his work. If he holds the older view, then his task as a catechist will be to transmit the divinely revealed doctrines with painstaking accuracy to his students. He will be very concerned with verbal formulae and may frequently insist that his students memorize catechetical formulations word for word, lest any of the divine trutlt be lost or distorted.

On the other hand, if the educator views revelation in more dynamic terms, he will seem to help students become conscious of the signs of the Jiving God present in their own lives. He will not see his task primarily as transmitting unspoiled doctrines from the deepfreeze of the past, but rather as helping the student reflect on his own experience. He will begin from

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the experience of the student or provide real and vicarious experiences upon which the student can reflect.

This does not mean that the teacher in this category is not interested in students learning the truths of their faith, but it does mean that he views his task as having much wider perimeters. He utilizes art, film, discussion and other creative activities not because they are good gimmicks to grab the students' attention, but because He believes that God continues to reveal himself in man's present experience.

We are confronted in the Church today with two different but not mutually exclusive theologies of revelation, both of which are reflected in the Directory. On the one hand, revelation is described as "the act by which God communicates Himself in a personal way." (#10) "God who spoke of old uninterruptedly converses with the Bride of His beloved Son." (#13) There is a real "growth in the understanding of the words and realities which have been handed down.'' (#13) In this perspective revelation is not regarded primarily as a set of doctrines from the past, but as a person who comes to us now in grace and love.

On the other hand, the more traditional view of revelation emerges from the text also. "Divine revelation," it states, "was completed at the time of the apostles.'' (#13) Faith is a free intellectual assent. (#15) The ministry of the word is the communication of a message. (#16) The implication here is that revelation is a body of doctrines and faith is an intellectual assent to these truths.

One of the problems, therefore, in this section of the Directory is not only that it reflects two significantly different theologies of revelation, but that it never successfully integrates or synthesizes the two. This observation is not offered as a criticism of the GCD, for it may well be that in view of the general nature of the document the authors did not wish to impose either view on the Church as a whole but wisely decided to allow the various national hierarchies to work out whatever synthesis seemed most appropriate.

THE CONTENT OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Anyone who has ever attempted to draw up a statement of the essential doctrinal components of a catechetical program

DIRECTORY

9

will be grateful to the authors of the Directory for facing this incredibly difficult task head on. Part III considers "The More Outstanding Elements of the Christian Message." In future discussions of what ought to be included in religion courses, all sides will have as a starting point an authoritative identification of those elements which the Church judges are required for an integral presentation of the Christian message.

If one harbors any suspicions that, despite the GCD's assurances of wide consultation in its preparation, the document was really composed behind locked doors by some Vatican beaurocrat, he will find all his suspicions dissolved when he studies this part of the Directory. The section is obviously the work of many authors or committees and is graphic testimony to the breath of the consultative process that preceded its publication. The resulting final version is a very sophisticated attempt to mirror the plurality of theologies currently being expounded in the Church.

The GCD gathers the principal elements of the Christian message under twenty-three headings. We are presented with a very disjointed, uneven and frequently overlapping list of doctrines rather than a coherent synthesis of belief.

At first glance, the theology of this section seems more reminiscent of the theology of the 1950s or before rather than of the post Vatican II era. Sacraments are described as "the signs Christ instituted which signify the gift of grace and produce it." (#55) The Eucharist "perpetuates the sacrifice of the cross in an unbloody manner." (#58) The treatment of morality and sin is largely restricted to the categories of obedience to law rather than more personalistic contemporary categories.

A more careful analysis of the document, however, reveals that it would be unfair to imply that it is an endorsement of an exclusively pre-Vatican II mentality. Even when the terminology is most traditional, there are usually indications that the Directory is far from closed to more contemporary theological developments. As we noted, sacraments are described in rather static terms as signs instituted by Christ to produce grace. But one has only to read a few lines further to find a more dynamic mentality evidenced as the sacraments are described as the "actions of Christ whereby he unceasingly be-

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stows His Spirit on the faithful." (#55) Similarly while the traditional sacrificial aspect of the Eucharist is stressed, the social implications of Eucharist are also noted. (#58) Even in the area of sin and morality, while the Directory never completely extricates itself from the constrictions imposed in treating morality solely in the context of law, it tries valiantly to rise above these constrictions. It seems to be trying to say that there is more to Christian moral living than just observing the law. The Christian is to embrace a way of life "in which love reigns in the keeping of the commandments." (#64) Whatever a man's vocation may be, "holiness of life is nothing other than the perfection of charity." (#64) Like the Church itself, the Directory straddles two different theological eras without attempting to draw them together in one monolithic whole. It looks at the old and the new, and decides to keep all doors open. Those who look to the Directory for a definitive resolution of theological or pedagogical disputes, or as a brake on contemporary catechetical developments will, in the last analysis, derive very little comfort from its pages.

How Do YOU TEACH RELIGION? Parts IV and V present a very balanced and positive exposition of catechetical methodology. Particularly welcome to American religious educators is the GCD's praise of the experiential, inductive method which is widely used in education in general and in religious education in particular. Many of the difficulties expressed by the older generation in regard to catechetics could be dissipated if they understood the difference between inductive and deductive methodology. Adult Catholics were taught religion and theology in a very deductive way.

That is, they began with the truths and p1¡inciples already formulated in exact and often abstract terminology. While the stress was on understanding and memorizing the formulations, good teachers would, of course, also try to apply these truths and principles to the student's life. It was hoped that as the student progressed he would continue to apply the truths of the faith to his expanding experience of life. ¡' The methodology is basically the same as used to be empl<)yed in teaching foreign languages. One would begin by memorizing the declension of nouns and conjugation of verbs

DIRECTORY

11

and the various rules which governed the granunatical structure of the language. These grammatical rules would then be applied to reading and to a lesser extent, to writing the foreign language even though, paradoxically, speaking is what a language is primarily all about. Today foreign languages are usually taught much more inductively and experientially. The student begins by listening to the language being spoken and gradually becomes aware of its unique cadences and characteristic rhythms. He then proceeds to imitate the strange sounds he has heard and .expresses real ideas in the new language. It is only very gradually and as he becomes familiar with the living language itself that he begins to learn the declensions and conjugations and grammatical rules.

Normally the student who has learned French, for example, in the older deductive way will do much better in a test designed to measure his ability to conjugate irregular verbs by inemory. On the other hand, should the same student find himself on the Champs Elysees one day, he may be disappointed to find that no one rushes up to inquire about the past participle of the verb avoir. He may sit at a sidewalk cafe conjugating irregular verbs by the hour but find that his amazing dexterity is of limited usefulness if he is really trying to order a meal.

By contrast the student trained inductively in the language may not do so well in tests which measure his retential ability, but he is much more likely to be able to use the language.

Similarly the Catholic who was educated in a predominantly deductive way will probably be quite glib in giving precise answers to such questions as why did God make you? What are the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost? Which are the sacraments of the living and the dead? The difficulty he faces, however, is two-fold. First of all as he makes his way through the marketplace of life, people seldom ask him to enumerate the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost or to distinguish between the sacraments of the living and the dead. Secondly, he may sense that the answers he has stored up to rarely asked questions are not his answers but somebody else's because he has not interiorized them. Perhaps the root of his problem lies in the fact that he learned the answers long before he personally asked any of the questions.

Such are the dangers of a deductive religious education.

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But there are dangers also in an exclusively inductive type of training. The Catholic schooled in the latter approach is likely to have a view of the faith which is more interiorized and personalized since it has been integrated with his experience of life, but he is liable to be more hesitant when asked for exact answers to questions about his religion. When pressed for clear details about his faith, he may find himself without a sufficiently coherent and accessible body of knowledge to which he can turn.

The Directory obviously favors the inductive method, but it is unwilling to leave a Christian's religious education to an exclusively inductive approach. It realizes that the Christian faith can be expressed, however inadequately, in human language and wants the Christian to be familiar with that language. On the other hand, it realizes the futility of imposing from without a series of abstract formulae and principles and accordingly suggests that formulas be introduced and explained only after "the lesson or inquiry has reached the point of synthesis." ( #73) FIRST CONFESSION AND FIRST COMMUNION

An Addendum to the Directory takes up the practical question of the appropriate age for first confession and first communion. For at least the last half dozen years there has been a growing trend in the United States to defer the reception of the sacrament of penance until some years after first communion. Authorities favoring the practice--and this would include the vast majority of American religious educatorsusually pointed to converging theological and psychological evidence indicating the dangers of premature initiation into the sacrament, and the positive advantage for the child's future spiritual growth of a lengthier preparation which would permit him to attain sufficient psychological maturity to understand more adequately such key concepts as sin in its relationship to God and the community, reconciliation and penance.

The Addendum acknowledges that in certain regions experiments have taken place in which children are admitted to first Communion without prior reception of the sacrament of penance. After reviewing briefly some of the reasons adduced in favor of the newer practice, the Directory states its opinion

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in no uncertain terms: "Having weighed all these points, and keeping in mind the common and general practice which per se cannot be derogated without the approval of the Apostolic See, and also having heard the Conferences of Bishops, the Holy See judges it fitting that the practice now in force in the Church of putting Confession ahead of first Communion should be retained." Despite the forcefulness of these words, the Addendum does not conclude inflexibly that this practice must be retained always and everywhere. It modifies its position by noting that in those regions where the newer practice has already been introduced, the bishops should reexamine this practice and if they then wish to continue postponing first confession, they should not do so without consulting with the Holy See. Cardinal Wright clarified this directive at the Internatiomil Catechetical Congress in Rome when he explained that this did not mean that the Conference of Bishops had to seek permission from the Holy See to continue a practice they would judge pastorally beneficial, but only that the Holy See wished to be kept informed of what they were doing in this area.

Continuation of the practice of deferring first confession depends upon verification of whether in fact the United States qualifies as a region where the new practice has been introduced. Following the November 1971 meeting of the American Bishops, a survey was sent from the general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to all ordinaries to verify the existence and extent of the practice of anticipating first communion. Of the 120 diocesan bishops replying, ninety-six (or 80 per cent) reported that the newer practice was being followed in their dioceses. Fifty-three dioceses reported that the newer practice was in effect in more than half of their parishes; thirty-four said that it was in effect in a significant number, but less than half; and fifteen dioceses said that the practice was in effect in only a small number of parishes. (Nexus News Notes, June 1972, National Center of Religious Education-CCD, p. 5) There can be little doubt, then, that the United States qualifies as a region where the newer practice has been introduced.

At their meeting in Spring of 1972 the American Bishops voted to¡ have their committee on Pastoral Research and Practices conduct an evaluation of this widespread practice. As a result

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of this evaluation, the Bishops decided at their November 1972 meeting to continue permitting the postponement of first confession for the next two years during which time the practice would be further evaluated.

For the present, then, pastors and catechists remain free to continue deferring first confession, except in those dioceses where the bishop has intervened to proscribe the new practice.

Even in these dioceses, while children may be advised to receive this sacrament prior to first communion, they cannot be compelled to do so. On the other hand, in areas where the newer practice is followed, no child can be refused the sacrament of penance if he sincerely desires to confess before first communion.

John Shea

An Approach to Pastoral Theology For the pastoml minister theology must become a cliscernable skill pamlleling his counselling ancl organizational ability.

It is certainly a cliche, definitely a bore, and undeniably true that the Catholic pastoral minister is suffering an identity crisis. But in no way is he wallowing in it. Reluctant to interpret himself solely in a liturgical-sacramental vocabulary he is searching, sometimes desperately, for a wider self-understanding. His search has led him into the areas of counselling and organization. More often than not the pastoral minister has taken courses in psychology or has had some supervision in counselling. He no longer flounders with people who come to see him but has developed a helping style. He is conversant with Rogers and Carkhuff, systematic in his approach, and knows what he wants accomplished in any given session. Part of the pastoral minister's developing self-understanding is as a para-professional in counselling. The pastoral minister has also searched out the techniques of organization. He no longer runs open-ended, rambling, inefficient meetings. He has learned to state goals behaviorally and marshall the means to achieve those goals. He mobilizes people around their needs and feelings to insure interest in the survival of any particular group.

He is not a pious man holding people together with smiles and frowns but a skilled organizer who gets things done. Compiementing the pastoral minister's counselling skills is a new sense of his organizational ability.

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In his search for self-definition the pastoral minister often sees theology as neutral. He has read or attended lectures on the ideas of Rahner, Kiing, and Schillebeeckx but they have seemed distant corners from his day-in-day ministry. He definitely has a new vision of Church but he does not attribute it to theology but to the psychodynamics of actual community living.

Counselling and organization are immediately useful skills.

Theology does not come across as a skill but as speculative word games that are endemic to the university but irrelevant to the parish. A parish priest put the issue strongly, "I dislike and distrust sterile theological ideas" ; and a deacon, after six months in a parish, returned to the seminary to spread the news, "You don't need theology. People don't ask theological questions." The theologian often responds to this criticism with the "background" argument. Theology is the necessary background for all Church activity. Without theological underpinnings the Church is reduced to a secular enterprise and the minister is exhaustively defined in secular terms. This is undoubtedly true but it is not enough. If theology is to contribute to the identity of the pastoral minister it must be more than an articulated belief system which gives motivational support and is periodically consulted. For the pastoral minister theology must become a discernable skill paralleling counselling and organizational ability. Theology must be seen not as stockpiled knowledge but as an interpretative style that responds to the deepest needs of the community. When this happens the specifically religious dimension of ministry will have recovered its primordial right to enter in and define the role of the minister.

A METHODOLOGY FOR PASTORAL THEOLOGY

This article will attempt to elaborate and systematize (as much as possible) the skill of pastoral theology. The hope is that the pastoral minister in functioning as a pastoral theologian will discover a significant aspect of his identity. The structure of the article is first to outline a methodology for pastoral theology and second to exemplify this methodology. The proposed method of pastoral theology has three stages: (1) to identify and elaborate the paradigmatic experiences of any individual or group, (2) to bring up the Christian tradition to

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illuminate and direct that experience, and (3) to elaborate a style and strategy of action out of the self-understanding that emerges from the encounter of experience and tradition. This methodology is not pastoral theology itself but an identification of the components of pastoral theology.

In the first stage the pastoral ministry identifies the paradigmatic experiences of the people. Etymologically, paradigmatic means "to show forth a pattern." The experiences the pastoral minister must search out are those happenings and encounters which have such an impact that they influence the way life is lived. A paradigmatic experience does not die the moment it is over but remains in the person not inactively as a residue but as a continual ferment. Some events are memorable; others easily forgotten. Some experiences are inconsequential; others the source of many decisions. The pastoral minister concentrates on those key experiences that dominate and shape the life of the individual and the community.

If the pastoral minister is to identify the funding experiences of a community, he must belong to that community. In the recent past of the Catholic Church belonging was more automatic; the structures of belonging were more evident.

One of these structures was ethnic identification. If an Irish priest (Polish, Italian, etc.) moved in to an Irish parish (Polish, Italian, etc.), he immediately belonged to that community.

The people knew the experiences out of which both he and his parents had come. His family might even be known by many members of the parish. He had instant rapport and was quickly at home. A second structure of belonging was the hard and fast categories which gave the priest a definite social role in community. The way a priest belonged to a community was clearly spelled out by custom and history. If a priest broke with this traditional mode of belonging canon law and moral theology had a word for it-scarulal. Both the structure of ethnicity (Irish ministering to Irish, Polish to Polish, etc.) and the strict social confinement of the priest are not as prevalent as they once were.

If the minister is to belong to the community today, he must belong on the level of the human. He must empathically understand the people to whom he is minister. He must dwell with them and share in their celebrations and their griefs. This way

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of belonging mediates between absorption and aloofness. The pastoral minister must not loose himself in the community for if he does he becomes incapable of ministering to it. On the other hand he cannot remain so aloof from the community that he does not understand its depth experiences and relates to it only as a tourist. Belonging to a community is both a painful and ecstatic way of life and indispensable for the person who would be the pastoral theologian.

The initial stance of the belonging minister is listening. The pastoral minister must listen not only to what is said but to what, even though it is unsaid, is felt. Listening in the sense of entering into and understanding is not an innate disposition in man. It is a discipline that must be developed against the constant preoccupation with the self and its thoughts. One of the hazards of ministry is that the minister reads too quickly the needs of the people. He does not listen, he guesses and his guesses often reflect more of himself than actual community needs. He then begins to build programs and services around these guesses and is painfully surprised by the fact that very few seem interested. Discerning a community's religious needs and its real paradigmatic experiences demand a listening that is characterized as much as possible by selflessness.

The paradigmatic experiences of a community or an individual are often not immediately evident. They are merged with the "non-experiences" and have not yet found the vocabulary that will reveal their significance. The pastoral minister has to name, to bring into consciousness what is motivating and troubling the community. When he does this successfully, "head nodding" occurs. The community (or person) experience the "aha," i.e., "you have said something real about me which I was not able to say ... or if I was able to say it, I did not see its significance." In this first stage of pastoral theology the minister must be able to identify the predominant experiences of the community. In order to do this he must belong to the community on the level of the human, empathically listen to its heartbeat, and bring into awareness what is motivating and influencing it.

CHRISTIAN WISDOM AND THE PARADIGM

The second stage of pastoral theology begins once the para-

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digmatic experiences have been named and explored. The pastoral minister brings up the Christian tradition. This is the specific point where formal theological training enters pastoral theology. The minister must have an extensive knowledge of Christian wisdom. He must be able to rummage the tradition to find the particular symbols that bear upon a particular experience. This type of knowledge is not a flat, memorized account of the Christian position on various affairs. It is a knowledge built on the relationship of primordial human situations and the religious response these situations call forth.

How are dogmas 1·elated to the cultures in which they were first formed? How are church structures related to practical problems? How does liturgy take up and transform human hope and fear? In a word the pastoral minister must be "moxy" about tradition.

All experience carries within itself the dynamic of revealing and concealing. It is part light, part darkness; the tip of the iceberg that shows the mass that is hidden. When Christian tradition is brought up, it sheds light on the darkness of experience, uncovers its hidden depths. A perspective and focus is given. The meaning of the experience is lifted out and placed in the framework of the Christian worldview. The encounter of tradition and experience, when it genuinely takes place, produces a change in consciousness. This is not the accumulation of knowledge or "musical chairs" with ideas. It is insight, new understanding, and possible metanoia. If in the first stage the pastoral minister identifies the key experiences and elicits an "aha" from the community, in the second stage, when a Christian interpretation is given, a mo1·e profound "aha" is expeJ·ienced. The Christian perspective is realized.

ELABORATING A STYLE OF ACTION

The third stage in a pastoral theology is to elaborate a style and a strategy. This is one of the most pressing problems facing the pastoral theologian. In the last ten years the Catholic church has seen the emergence of extremes. At one extreme faith is a highly privatized, interior communion with God and Christ. The world and its demands are neglected; only what is eternal is of value. A spirituality that closes its eyes and gazes only inward is cultivated. The heresy of action is railed

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against. At the other extreme is a new dedication to the earth, the embracement of the world. The sole concern is to put an end to racism, war, injustice, and poverty. The emphasis of faith and God wastes valuable time and drains valuable energy that could be spent in helping your brother. The concerns of faith and God must be bracketed and the pain and anguish of the immediate world dealt with. If the first extreme bred a narcissism that was hardly Christian, the second extreme flowered in disillusionment and cynicism. The task of the pastoral minister is to end this polarization, to relate faith and action, to show how the Christian-interpreted experience unfolds in a personal life-style and a practical strategy. If this is not done effectively, the exclusive and false dichotomy of God-man, soulbody, world-church, wins the day.

The Christian-interpreted experience intimates a style and a strategy, but it does not dictate a particular response to a particular problem. This distinction is important, for theology should not be expected to provide political and social science services. The Christian religious perspective, by the very nature of the case, does not provide solutions to the problems of housing, pollution, or race. What it does provide is an orientation and a framework in which concrete programs can be evaluated. There is no one Christian response to each personal and political problem. There can be many and differing modes of action that are congruent with the Christian vision. Our response is Christian as long as it emerges from a Christian style. This does not lessen Christianity's impact on the concrete but focuses its sphere of influence. The Christian perspective is not lifelessly tied to a single, timeless, "always right" response.

The Christian style and strategy unfolds and embodies itself in various ways in various cultures. The third stages of a pastoral theology is to live out the life and strategy which the Christian interpreted experience suggests.

To divide pastoral theology into three stages provides a systematic grasp for the pastoral minister. But to mention these stages (identifying the experience, bringing up the tradition, and elaborating a life-style and a strategy) is only to name the intellectual components. Pastoral theology goes beyond the automatic application of a model. In a very real sense the pastoral theologian is analogous to the artist. Through his skill he

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helps to create a consciousness in a community of its meaning and responsibility. He is called to be in Nietzsche's words "poet of our everyday lives." This reference to poetry brings out the pr~ognitive feel for the religious dimension of life that characterizes great pastoral theology. There may be a crisis among pastoral ministers but is should never be the crisis of meaning. For as a pastoral theologian the minister engages in, for himself and the community, the primordial act of man interpreting the Really Real and trying to live in communion with it. This is a fundamental drive which, when exercised in the concrete, draws on the most creative aspects of the human personality.

THE METHOD EXEMPLIFIED

The experience of transcendence will serve to exemplify this method of pastoral theology. This experience, although seemingly tailored to theological reflection, often leaves people mystified and embarrassed. To the average church-goer transcendent expet;ence is that esoteric and eirie thing that happens in monasteries and cloisters. When transcendent experience is mentioned, the imagination quickly seizes on Paul in the seventh heayen, Francis on Mt. Alverno, Catherine of Sienna in a three day trance, Joseph of Cupertino floating through a church. But these ecstasies, presuming their validity, are only the most intense and spectacular forms of transcendent experience. Transcendence can be a commoner, quieter, but no less real experience. An experience becomes transcendent when it goes beyond the everyday way of perceiving and experiencing the world. What is gone beyond can be anything from time to self to culture to other peoples' opinions. In The Farther Reaches of Human Nature Abraham Maslow outlines thirtyfive various meanings of transcendence. An experience becomes transcendent when it breaks away from a piecemeal, particularistic mode to a more wholistic perception which combines feeling and cognition. Transcendent experience understood in this way is not the private privilege of a few but a basic potentiality of being human which is actualized to various degrees and in various ways. In "Some Notes on the Sociological Study of Mysticism" Andrew Greeley and William McCready remark "In preliminary work with the national

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sample ... perhaps as many as fifty percent of the American population has had some kind of ecstatic experience in the course of their lives." But whatever the actual statistics are, transcendent experience is widespread enough to be the subject of pastoral theology.

When speaking of experience a tâ&#x20AC;˘emark of Alfred North Whitehead must be honored: "The word experience is one of the most deceitful in philosophy." A distinction might help remove some of this deceit. Experience can refer to a single occasion, a special event, a definite moment. Transcendent experiences of this type are called peak experiences. They are intense and fleeting and involve an element of surprise, shock, and climax. The experience is understood as a gift. It comes without being beckoned and leaves without permission. There is a second understanding of experience which is not so much as instantaneous affair but a "dwelling," a sustained realization, a passionate insight. Transcendent experiences of this type are called plateau experiences. They are more leisurely and last longer, more reflective and cognitive. In plateau experiences the person has more control. He may not be able to suinmon the experience at will but he knows the mental and physical setting of the experience and can induce in himself a state of openness to these triggers. Understanding transcendent experience as both peak and plateau widens its application and brings many people to the realization that "something like this" has happened to them.

Some examples of peak and plateau experiences will show "transcendence in the concrete." A salesman friend was driving a long stretch of tollway across the Midwest. Driving was automatic and his mind was on his preoccupying concern-his teenage son. He could not remember the last time he and his son saw eye to eye or for that matter even looked in the same direction. The boy was incorrigible and for the longest time had caused him and his wife nothing but pain. Suddenly he was struck (his words) "by an overwhelming sense of the goodness of this kid." It was not just a deduced intellectual observation but a "feeling knowledge" which flooded him and grabbed him "in the most real way I have ever experienced." This peak experience gave him the renewed energy to relate to his son in a creative way. A second example of a peak experience appeared

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in Tim.e for October 5, 1970. A Tim.e reporter visited Drs. Robert Masters and Jean Houston who are doing research into altered states of consciousness. Under their direction and suggestion the reporter flew "to the core of life itself" and in· that sacred place asked about the mystery of injustice. "What followed was ineffable ... I became more and more sorrowful at what I envisioned, indeed tears were streaming down my face; yet increasingly I could "see" in the most profound way I have ever known that the beauty of life far exceeds the sorrow, the injustice." A metaphor for peak experience might be explosion, the sudden eruption of felt meaning.

PLATEAU EXPERIENCES

Transcendent plateau experiences are somewhat harder to describe. Abraham Maslow gives this example: "The less intense plateau-experience is more often experienced as pure enjoyment and happiness, as let's say, a mother sitting quietly looking, by the hour, at her baby playing and marveling, wondering, philosophizing, not quite believing. She can experience this is a very pleasant, continuing, contemplative experience.... (Abraham Maslow, The Fa:>·ther Reaches of Hum.an Nature, New York: The Viking Press, 1971, p. 340.)

In his essay the "Unawareness of God" Michael Novak talks about freedom, honesty, community, and courage in a way that suggests plateau experiences. "In each such experience more than ourself or any part of ourself seems to be operative....

These experiences leave even the atheists to feel at moments as if he might be participating in the life of another than he."

(Michael Novak, "The Unawareness of God," The God Expe1-ience, ed. Joseph P. 'Whelan, New York, Newman Press, 1971, p. 8, 15.) In Man Becoming Gregory Baum is aware of plateau experiences in the two dimensions which constitute human selfhood, dialogue and communion. Man comes to be through dialogue with others. Out of this ongoing dialogue a man develops a ·sense of who he is and where he is going. Men speak to each other words of acceptance and love but they also speak painful words that call for conversion and a new lifestyle. For Baum in and through these human words a special word is spoken, a word which transcends the people involved.

This word is discerned as transcendent and gratuitious because

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the speaker knows that is it not necessarily his alone and that by it he himself is judged. The same reflective awareness is present in communion. Man in communion with other people is loved and accepted. In this love and acceptance he finds the strength to reply to the special word of conversion offered him.

This love and acceptance which is the core of man's freedom is a gift given him by others. But here again man senses that the gift of human communion goes beyond it, transcends human ambuigity and fraility. Man knows that the gift dimension of life is more than he is. Plateau experiences are reflective entries into the mysteries in which man constantly dwells.

If transcendent experience is what the pastoral theologian is going to work with, he must be able to explore it thoroughly on the level of description. In other words he must be familiar with its psychological and sociological trappings. What are some of the common contexts that trigger transcendent experience (nature, sexual love, the birth of a child, religious liturgies, great works of art, scientific knowledge, poetry, the creative endeavor)? What are the feelings that accompany tmnscendent experience (union, a sense of the whole, of standing outside oneself, of life purified and renewed, of satisfaction and joy, of ineffability)? How do these experiences affect people?

What are their pitfalls and possibilities? The pastoral theologian must be familiar with the social science aspect not because he himself is a psychologist or a sociologist but because he must cultivate and exploit the experiential basis of theological reflection. If he does not do this, his theological language will not be grounded in the experience of the people and will become the basis of alienation and not illumination. The pastoral minister must be insightful on the shape transcendent experience takes within his community. This experience must be brought to consciousness and dwelled within.

There are many components within peak and plateau transcendent experiences. The pastoral theologian emphasizes the sense of the whole, the relationship between the person and the totality he is now experiencing, the sense of contact with the more, the mystery, the encompassing. In the words of Michael Murphy, "This feeling of being entered by or entering upon something greater is at the heart of the sense of transcendence." (Michael Murphy, "Education for Transcendence,"

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Transcendence, ed. by Herbert Richardson and Donald R. Cutler, Beacon Press, Boston, 1969, p. 18.) This "something greater" is ineffable mysterious, ambiguous. Everything about transcendent experience proclaims it is real and supremely important. But at the same time it needs interpretation. It is at this point the pastoral theologian, having identified and cultivated the experience, reaches into the Christian tradition to interpret it.

THE CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION

The fundamental Christian interpretation of the totality to which man is related and of which he becomes aware in b¡anscendent experience is that it accepts him. Acceptance is a perennial and extremely powerful need of man. In fact his desire for acceptance is often so great that he will compromise himself to gain it. Rather than be ostracized he will play the clown, the fool, the conformist. But when a man puts on a mask in order to be accepted he does not really gain the acceptance he wants. He gains a surface acceptability. His projected phony image belongs but he himself is still outside. What man really yearns for is an acceptance that knows him through and through, his foibles and his sins, his most noble ideals and the mean little longings of his heart; and knowing this accepts him anyway. In other words he wants an ultimate, unconditional acceptance.

The Christian wisdom holds that the "something greater" which man encounters in his transcendent experience fulfills this need. Two Christian symbols that assure us of this acceptance are "God is love" and the "Resurrection of Jesus." St. John insists that man did not win the favor of a hard-hearted God but that God first loved man. St. Paul states that man is justified by God's grace (his freely given gift of self) and not by man's mighty attempts at self-salvation. Paul Tillich elaborates this theme when he says that God has accepted man and must accept his own acceptance. He must acknowledge that his security lies beyond himself in God's free gift of love. This is also the primal meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus. Throughout his ministry Jesus calls men to faith, to have confidence and trust in the last power which holds and sustains life. This is the new righteousness which Jesus proclaims, a righteousness not

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based on obedience to the law but on the forgiving love of God. All Jesus' words and actions--sometimes ove1tly, sometimes obliquely--converge on the theme that God accepts man and man should trust in God. In this context the death of Jesus in a final violent stroke poses the ultimate religious question "Can the last power of life accept man and be gracious toward him when this innocent man, Jesus, is crucified 1 What kind of love sanctions this 1 Does not the tmturous' death of Jesus reveal God's indifference, the most cruel form of rejection 1" The Resurrection answers this question. God accepts and sustains man through the terrors of death and beyond death raises him to new life. The Christian tradition proclaims that "something greater" cares about man.

The relationship of man to the "something greater" of his transcenrlent experiences is not mere acceptance but a paradoxical acceptance that is also judgment. When man comes to the realization that he is accepted, at that ve1-y moment he knows he is not who he should be. This accusation of his shortcomings is not finger wagging or the external and unrelated demands of law and custom. The critique is an essential component of the acceptance. It would not be experienced and could not be borne without the acceptance. This notion of critique is expressed in the Gospel of John. The very presence of Jesus, whose basic stance towards man is acceptance, is also judgment. The acceptance which Jesus proclaims calls for a response and inevitably critiques those who do not respond or those who only respond partially.

This intimate mutuality of acceptance and critique unfolds into the thin! aspect of the relationship between the "something greater" and man. As critique is an essential component of acceptance, so call is an essential component of Cl'itique.

Critique is not arbitrary judgment which delights in condemnation. Its whole purpose is to summon forth new life. The biblical symbol which speaks to this call-dimension of transcendent experience is The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is already present in human life but is not yet fully present. The tension between the "already" and the "not yet" exerts a pressure, confronts man with the possibilities of more justice, truer peace, greater love. There can be no permanent settling in the present;: for man is haunted by a dynamic and creative unrest

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which will not petmit complacency. The "something greater" of transcendent experience is a continual call to conversion, a summons to new life.

The Christian tradition has been brought up to illuminate and direct the tra'!scendent experience. The result has been a religious self-understanding-man is accepted, critiqued and called by the "something greater" of his experience. This resonates with the traditional statement that by grace the Holy Trinity dwells in man as The Father who loves him, the Son who judges him; and the Spirit who gives him life. This religious self-understanding urges a definite life-style. It does not dictate the particular but it does supply a strategy. We can sketch some elements of this suggested style.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE STYLE

If man's ultimate relationship is comprised of acceptance,

critique and call these elements should enter into his proximate relationships. Often ideal relationships are characterized as those where "complete acceptance" has occurred. This usually means that confrontation has been eliminated because it is seen as a personal threat. But Christian self-understanding urges man to seek critique as an essential component of being human and a natural dynamic in relating. At the same time it also suggests that critique is only effective when it is inherent in acceptance. The conventional wisdom of human relationships dichotomizes these elements "I like this person and therefore accept him. I dislike this person and therefore critique him."

Jn this misunderstanding neither acceptance nor critique are successful for they are isolated into complacency and bitterness.

In all human relationships thet¡e should a)sobe a call to what is not yet. It is in this aspect that relationships most often fail.

People seldom have the courage to call others to new life. Even between "close friends" the phrase "It's none of my businessu or "just leave him alone" too often takes the place of call. Once again call is only successful relating when it unfolds out of acceptance and critique. The thrust of this style is that man's ultimate relationship is the model for his interpersonal dealings.

One of the catch words of popular psychology is risk. Risk is seen to be the difficult but necessary stance if any relation-

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ship is to grow. There is a stubbornness in man, a strong bent towards self-enclosure, a valuing of safety that prohibits risk taking. It is not easy for man to risk his weaknesses and strengths in communion with another or a community. The paradox .is that only the secure risk, only the rooted reach out.

If a man lives in the realization that he is rooted in the "something greater" of his transcendent experiences which accepts, critiques, and calls him, he is enabled to 1¡isk. His self-understanding gives him the power and the courage to go outside himself. His style is one of reaching out, of taking a chance.

Closely related to risk and urged by man's ultimate relationship is the markedly Christian stance of returning good for evil. On the level of national and international politics that stance becomes extremely complicated and involves the pros and cons of pacifism. In interpersonal relationships the strategy of returning good for evil is the sine qua non of endurance and gro\vth. Without it any intimate relationship will at worst completely atrophy or at best become an armed truce. As with risk the courage to return good for evil comes from the consciousness that man is ultimately accepted, critiqued, and called and he can afford to respond in kind. As a friend puts it, "If the universe is out to do you good, you can risk doing good to others."

The pastoral minister must recognize that part of his identity is as a pastoral theologian. Doing pastoral theology not only involves theological knowledge but is a definite skill paralleling counselling and organizational skills. The elements of this skill are: (1) the ability to identify and cultivate the significant experiences of a community; (2) to bring up the Christian tradition to illuminate and direct those experiences; (3) to elaborate a style and a strategy consonant with the Christian interpreted experience. This method can be applied to any area. In a recent series at the Center for Pastoral Ministry in Chicago this method was applied to the world of the sick, the world of the family, and the world of the Black. In this article transcendent experience was used as an example.

Hopefully this exploration and exemplification of a method of pastoral theology will help ministers to reflect on this role as pastoral theologians.

John F. Dedek

Tax a lion and the New Economics

In confessional]Jmctice and private counselling a priest should be able to explain the nature, purpose, and m01¡al

obligations of tax laws.

We used to believe that two things in life are certain. There now seems to be some doubt about death. Thanks to the discovery of DNA and the cracking of the genetic code, some of the new biologists are predicting the elimination of certain and inevitable death. The new economists, on the other hand, have no such good news to report. Like Sisyphus, condemned forever to roll a great stone up a steep mountain, the American taxpayer seems fated to bear indefinitely the ever increasing costs of government.

The American taxpayer complains, but he pays. The Inter. nal Revenue Service has estimated that only one percent of the population fails to file an income tax return. And the New York Times has estimated that only four percent of all taxes fixed by law go unpaid. People complain about taxes. They

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frequently boast about evading them. But it seems that most are conscientious about paying them.

In fact they are often overconscientious. Many people frequently pay more than is demanded. Overpayment is not due to generosity or patriotism. lt is due to fear coupled with ignorance. American tax law is complex and highly technical.

It puzzles many lawyers, confuses most congressmen, and completely baffles the average citizen. Only tax experts and special interest lobbyists seem able to find their way through the legal and verbal fog of our modern tax legislation.

The moral law seems equally inscrutable. Dominic Pliimmer, the great Dominican moralist of the early twentieth century, once wrote: "There are few areas in moral theology where there is a greater variety of opinion than about the obligation of paying taxes." Arthur Hull Hayes of CBS put this problem before the theologians attending the 16th annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America: "I have heard theologians say that is just a penal law-not binding in conscience. And I have heard other theologians say there is no such thing as a penal law .... A theologian recently told me that misrepresentation on an income tax up to 30% by such devices as overstating contributions and so forth was not morally wrong because the law expected that when it was written; whereas other theologians have said that this was morally wrong and an injustice to those honest taxpayers who must then pay a disproportionate share.... Income tax poses manifold problems on which there seem to be so many theological opinions which need clarification."

Clarification of this very complex issue will be helped considerably by an accurate understanding of the contemporary meaning and purpose of taxation in the modern economic state.

PURPOSE OF FEDERAL TAXATION

Until very recent times taxation was commonly thought of as a means to collect revenue to pay for the cost of government, particularly the cost of war and national defense. Federal income tax was first proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander J. Dallas, during the War of 1812. However, the government managed to meet its deficits and balance its budget without it, depending on tariffs and increased excise taxes.

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But after the Battle of Bull Run, when the North saw that the Civil War was going to be long and expensive, President Lincoln signed the first federal income tax law in July, 1862.

After the Civil War the rates were cut in half in 1870, and in 1872 the income tax law was repealed. That was the end of the matter until the eve of World War I. In 1913 the federal income tax was reinstituted, and was shar-ply increased during World War I. During World War II it became the instrument of mass taxation that we know today, and it was continued and increased during the post-war period to help pay for war and national defense.

The same is true of federal excise taxes. Almost all now in force started as a temporary means of raising money for war.

They were initiated during the war of 1812, reinstituted during the Civil War, and greatly expanded during the two World vVars. Other government expenses also played an impoti:ant role. For instance, during the Great Depression less receipts from taxes on dwindling incomes led to the reintroduction of many of the repealed wartime taxes.

Historically, another important purpose of fedet¡al taxation was the redistribution of wealth in the nation. The Internal Revenue Act of 1862 included graduated rates, and the leveling effect on people's incomes did not go unnoticed. Social reformers during the Populist movement saw it as a means of curbing the great concentrations of wealth and growing financial power of the Eastern bankers and industrialists. Populist pressure in 1894 led to the reenactment of a federal income tax law as a means to redistribute the wealth in the country. But the United States Supreme Court declared the Internal Revenue Act of 1894 unconstitutional. Tax laws could not be enacted for the purpose of redistributing wealth. As Calvin Coolege expressed it in the 1920's, "If we are to adopt socialism, it should be presented to the people of the country as socialism and not under the guise of a law to collect revenue." .During the New Deal era, however, the mood changed. The Populists arguments were revived and finally accepted. As a result the tax legislation between 1936 and 1940 levied a high rate of tax on large incomes, raised¡it up to 79% for top brackets, while only 4% for the first $4,000. It also took an increasing share of corporate incomes. The redistribution of wealth

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began to be seen as a very important purpose of federal taxation. Money makes money, and by an almost natural inertia wealth tends to concentrate in a few hands. Such concentration would be disastrous for our whole economy, for the rich as well as the poor. Therefore to keep our economic system going the federal government must see to it that nearly everyone has and keeps some slice of the common economic pie.

Such was the understanding of classical economics. It was the common and politically orthodox doctrine until the last decade. Today, however, it has been repudiated by not only the new economists but also our political leaders. It may still exist vestigially in the popular mind and political rhetoric.

But it no longer has any place in politico-economic practice.

The new economists still regard the redistribution of wealth as an important result of federal taxation. But they no longer think of it as having any relevance to paying the costs of government.

THE KEYNESIAN TAX THEORY

In 1883, the year that Karl Marx died, John Maynard Keynes was born. He became a Cambridge don, lecturing on economics.

In 1935 he wrote a letter to George Bernard Shaw saying: "I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionize--not I suppose at once, but in the course of the next ten years-the way the world thinks about economic problems. . . . I cannot expect you or anyone else to believe this at the present stage. But for myself I don't merely hope what I say-in my own mind, I'm quite sure."

Not only was he quite sure; he was quite right. No other book-neither Wealth of Nations nor Das Kapita/,-had so desively turned economics up side down as Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Thirty-five years later Time Magazine was quite accurate in saying, "We are all Keynesians now.''

It took a long time for his theory to be adopted in political and economic practice. The principal reason is that his book is almost inscrutable. Here is a typical sentence: "Let Z be the aggregate supply p1;ce of the output from employing N men, the relationship between Z and N being written Z=phi (N), which can be called the Aggregate Supply Function." If eco-

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nomics had not already been know as "The Dismal Science," it would have after Keynes. His book has been described as a trackless desert of economics, algebra, differential calculus, and .abstraction.

Nonetheless from 1936 on, while the old economics was still taught in the schools by day, in the evenings almost everyone ·discussed Keynes. What saved The Geneml Theory from premature internment was the fact that the messiah had able and lucid prophets: Alvin Hansen and Seymour Harris of Harvard, Paul Samuelson of MIT, a group of younger economists .at the University of Chicago and Yale, and more recently John Kenneth Galbraith and Walter Heller. The result of their ·efforts has been that today Keynesianism is the new orthodoxy.

Canada was probably the first country to put Keynes' theory into practice. The Eisenhower administration tried it during the recession of 1958, and it worked. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon have continued its use, and it has now be·come our standard economic policy.

Simply put, the new economics says: "If unemployment and idle productive capacity persists in an advanced economy, this evil can be cured by manipulation of government spending and taxation-more spending, less taxation to increase total demand in the economy. In these circumstances the fact of a deficit in the budget is irrelevant. Magically, spending more .and taxing less will actually reduce the deficit by creating more production and jobs and hence more revenue."

Therefore, President Roosevelt did exactly the wrong thing ·during the Great Depression. His policy of "pump-priming" · poured money into the economy, but his increased taxation to pay the deficit took it out again. And so he prolonged the depression needlessly. It was overcome only by the great deficit financing necessary for World War II. The Keynesian secret, therefore, is deficit financing-more government spending or .a cut in taxes--during a recession, and a surplus--less spending or increased taxation-to prevent or slow down inflation.

Milton Freidman of the University of Chicago has convinced many economists that the manipulation of the national economy by tax increases or reductions must go hand in hand with a ·complementary monetary policy. A tight money policy offsets the effects of a tax cut. In 1964 the fiscal policy, a tax cut,

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and the monetary policy, the supply of credit or money from the Federal Reserve, moved in the same direction with favorable results. But in 1966 a budget deficit was counterbalanced by a decrease in the money supply. The result was the minirecession of 1967, which was finally corrected only by reversing the· tight money policy. Also, John Kenneth Galbraith has argued persuasively that fiscal policy sometimes must be combined with wage-price controls if we want nearly full employment at all times, sinces Keynes' fiscal policy of keeping a balanced and steadily growing economy through tax regulation assumes that there can never be full employment.

These two corrections have nuanced or complemented basic Keynesian doct!·ine. But with these qualification, it seems safe to say that Keynesian theory has won the day and explains the true purpose and function of federal taxation. The federal government does not tax us to raise revenue to pay for government's goods and services or to balance its budget. Rather, taxation is the instrument for the manipulaion, regulation and fine-tuning on our general economy. In the process it also redistributes wealth among the people for the sake of the general economic well being.

THE NATIONAL DEBT

The conventional wisdom and some of the political rhetoric still assumes that tlie federal government has to pay its bills just like everyone else. Nothing is further from the truth.

The fact is that there is no way for us ever to pay off our national debt and there is no reason why we should ever do so.

The failure of the conventional wisdom is that it likens the national debt to personal debt, but this ci>mparison is wholly misleading. International debt may bear some similarity to personal debt, but the national debt is quite different.

The difference is that when one incures a personal debt, say by buying a house with a long term mortgage, he is able to consume mot·e now than he earns or produces. But when a nation incurs a national debt, it is not able to consume any more than it earns or produces. There is no loosening of the belt by incuring the debt and so there is no need to tighten it afterwards.

Personal debt always makes one poorer, for one's net worth

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equals his assists less his debts. But national debt does not make a nation any poorer, because national debts plus national credits equals zero. A national debt of one trillion dollars equals a national credit of one trillion dollars. A national debt of one trillion dollars does not make us poorer by a trillion dollars any more than a national credit of one trillion dollars makes us that much richer. We are as rich or poor as our gross national product. The national debt and national credit cancel each other out, for the simple reason that we owe the national debt to ourselves.

This means that we never have to pay our national debt no matter how big it gets. It is true that government bonds and treasury certificates fall due on certain dates. But then new bonds and notes can be issued and often to the same people who held the original certificates which matured. For it is to the benefit of people with extra money to invest it in interest-producing certificates rather than to hold it in non-productive cash.

The result, of course, is that we are always sinking deeper in debt, because the interest payments alone have become an enormous government expense. One thousand people paying a dollar a second would not cover the ever increasing cost of interest. But this can go on forever, since we can keep borrowing money to pay the interest. All this does is increase the national debt, which does no harm in itself.

But, one wonders, what if everyone lost confidence in the government at once and wanted their money now? First of all, that is impossible as long as there is no national economic disaster such as the Great Depression (and, thanks to Keynes, that also is impossible now). But suppose it was possible and did happen. Then the government could print money instead of bonds and treasury certificates if, for some unimaginable reason, all the people preferred to hold currency which does not yield any interest.

Then why do we not simply cancel the national debt if it does not matter? The answer is that it does matter, but not in the way or with the effect that the conventional wisdom thinks.

When we say that we owe the national debt to ourselves, the 10e and the ourselves do not designate the same individuals.

Therefore if we simply canceled the national debt, the richer people who hold most of the government securities would be

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hurt, (although they would be considerably compensated because the accompanying reduction of taxes would help them much more than the poor) .

Besides, the people who own the national debt, that is the creditors, are and feel richer; hence they spend more, since they already have a lot of money in savings. Their extra spending is good or bad depending on the current state of the economy. If there is a recession, the spending is good; if there is inflation, the spending is bad. That brings us back to the real meaning and function of federal taxation today. It is for the fine-tuning of the over-all economy, to check recession and control inflation, by keeping an appropriate amount of money and consequent purchasing power in the hands of the people at all times.

MORAL OBLIGATION OF PAYING TAXES

In recent times an increasing number of moralists judged that the individual's obligation to pay taxes was governed by the canons of legal justice. But in the past many theologians held that the individual citizen has a strict obligation in commutative justice to pay all just taxes. For, they argued, there is an implicit contract between the government and the people: the government is to provide public goods and services and the people are to pay their fair share in support of them. St. Alphonsus Ligouri cited twenty-three authors who held this opinion and said that it was the most common and most probable one in his day. And in the present century this view has had some support. For instance, Dominic Priimmer wrote: "Without the payment of just taxes social life today would be almost impossible. In return for his taxes the government provides the citizen most precious benefits-internal and external peace, roads, recreation centers, postal service, etc. All these things are not given free. Hence if citizens refuse to pay their just taxes and still accept these benefits they violate commutative justice."

At least on the level of federal tax laws, this opinion no longer has any probability. Anyone who understands the true purpose and function of federal tax legislation as it exists and is understood in our contemporary economic society has to dismiss this ethical view as wholly obsolete. It may have been

TAXATION

37

defensible in a feudal society. It may sound convincing to one who is unaquainted with the. new economics. But it certainly has no relevance to the real economic world in which we currently live.

Only on the level of local tax laws do these arguments have any plausability. For unlike the federal government, State and local governments Ievey taxes to suppmt services they provide, e.g. education, police and fire protection, parks and playgrounds and so forth. Still, the situation of local governments is not altogether univocal. Most receive federal grants to help pay for these expenses. Last year Congress voted to distribute about 30.3 billion dollars to State and local governments over a five year period. Besides, in our expanding economy most State and local governments are beginning to show a collective surplus. In the present fiscal year these government units are expected to take in about $128 billion, which is between 7 to 10 billion dollars more than they spend. Facts like these go to confuse any argument that would try to prove a strict obligation in commutative justice to pay all just taxes even on the local level.

Practically what all this means is that the individual citizen has no obligation in commutative justice to pay his federal income tax and therefore no moral obligation to make restitution if he fails to do so. An obligation to restitution arises only from a violation of strict commutative justice, and there is certainly no question of commutative justice here.

This, of course, is no novel moral opinion. Even theologians working out of the old economics held that in practice one could in good conscience follow this opinion. Some theologians in the past believed that there was an obligation in commutative justice, but many others argued that the obligation arose rather from legal justice. Because of the dispute among moralists, there was prudent doubt and so, thanks to the doctrine of probabilism, the more lenient opinion could be used. Today, thanks to our understanding of the new economics, we no longer need have recourse to probabilism and prudent doubts. We are certain that the stricter opinion has no foundation and is only of historical interest.

The function of federal taxation is not the collection of revenue to balance its budget. It is not an effort to have every

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citizen pay his fair share for government goods and services.

Hence the issue is not one of an individual defrauding others in the society by not contributing his allotted share to pay for the common benefits. This is the image in the conventional wisdom, but it is not what is going on. Rather, the purpose of modern federal taxation is to control and manipulate our economic system for its general well-being. To this end it redistributes the wealth and adds or subtracts money from the economy according to the current economic conditions. It achieves this goal by enacting and enforcing appropriate tax legislation.

This legislation certainly does not suppose or give rise to any obligation in commutative justice or to any obligation to restitution in instances of its violation. And whether it gives rise to any moral obligation at all is still an open question. An increasing number of contemporary moralists are denying the existence of purely penal laws, arguing that every just civil law binds in conscience. But I think that it is safe to say that even this issue is still debatable and therefore in practice one may follow the more lenient view.

I suspect that a large number of our people have an overly strict conscience on the matter of taxation. A noisy public campaign to enlighten them, of course, would be scandalous.

But in confessional practice and private counselling a priest should be able to explain the nature and purpose of modern tax laws, not urge any moral obligations which are doubtful, and certainly never suggest restitution because of fraudulent returns in the past.

WiUmm G. Thompson, S.J.

Conflict, Anger and Growth in the Church At this point in history conflict rtnd rtnger are necessary for the growth of the Christirtn community.

A mid-west parish exploded the other day. The tension between the pastor anrl the coordinator for religious education re~hed the boiling point. The lid blew off. And a chain-reaction began. Suppressed tensions suddenly surfaced. The coordinator resigned. Parishioners expressed their frustrations to e~h other. And the walls came tumbling down. Many months and much hard work will be needed to put this parish back together again. It may never be back together. An irreversible process has begun. A new parish is being born. Hopefully, it will be better and more alive than what has been.

Scenes like this are multiplying rapidly in the Church, and they take us by surprise. We are userl to conflict in politics, on the athletic field, or in business. But does it belong in a parish, in a religious congregation, in a diocesan Senate or in the Vatican Curia? Conflict means anger. Entering into conflict means sustaining the hostile feelings that provide the necessary fuel and energy. Are such feelings compatible with the virtues traditionally recognized as Christian-love and peace? Is there room for conflict and anger in the Church?

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I suggest that at this point in history they are necessary for the growth of the Christian community.

NEW TESTAMENT TIMES

The New Testament provides a very clear example of how conflict and anger can contribute to growth in the Church. The first Jewish Christians did not have a clear understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. They struggled for a sense of their own identity through experimentation, debate and competition. At first they saw themselves as a sect within Judaism, not unlike other Jewish religious groups such as the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. So they continued to worship in the temple at Jerusalem like the other Jews of their day (Acts 2 :46f). They also observed all those Jewish customs which could be 1·econciled with their belief that Jesus Christ was the promised Messiah. But as the Church moved out from Jerusalem itself and from Palestine, and as the Jewish-Christians came in contact with the different cultures of the diaspora, they faced questions which had not been raised in a predominantly Jewish milieu. The question was: "To what extent is a Christian obliged to adhere to the prescriptions of the Jewish law? Was it necessary for all Christians, whether Jews or Gentiles, to be circumcised and to obey the dietary laws which bound the Jews"!"

There were three opinions in conflict with each other. The first answer, given by the so-called circumcision party, was that circumcision according to the custom of Moses was essential for salvation (Acts 15:1, 5). All Christian.s, pagans and Jews alike, had to follow all the prescriptions of the Mosaic law. The second answer was·more moderate. It attempted to keep what was good in the Jewish law, but reinterpret it and adapt it according to the teachings of Jesus. So those sayings of Jesus which gave new meaning to the Jewish law were handed on until they reached the final version of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5 :17-48). The law is good. It remains valid. But it needs the interpretation which Jesus the Rabbi gave to his disciples. The thi1·d position was much more revolutionary. It is the position of Paul who compared the Jewish law to a custodian or a tutor. It was necessary for a time, that is, until the Chl"ist-event. But now all men have come to rna-

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turity in Christ where "there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3 :23-29). The Jewish law has lost its force. It has been replaced by a new principle of action-faith working through love (Gal. 5 :1-6) .

These three views clashed with each other. The clearest confrontation occurred at Antioch (Gal. 2.11-21). Peter had been visiting the city and had been taking meals with the Gentiles, a practice condemned by the Jewish law. But when men came up from the Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem, he drew back and separated himself from the Gentiles for fear of the more conservative circumcision party. Paul then stood up to Peter. He confronted him with the fact that he had acted insincerely, and warned him that his actions were influencing the other Christians. Paul was angry. But what was the reason for his anger? Was he merely trying to dominate Peter, so that he could maintain control over the Antioch community?

Or was he moved by concern for the truth of the gospel he had received from the Lord and had preached to the Antioch Christians? It is difficult to sort out Paul's motives. But it seems clear that the anger behind his actions came in large part from his concern that the gospel message be correctly understood and put into practice. The Christians in Antioch had come to recognize that in Christ there is no differenc.e between Jew and Gentile. So they entered pagan homes and shared meals with them. But Peter's conduct made them question their belief, so that even Barnabas, Paul's closest follower, stopped eating with the Gentiles.

The Acts of the Apostles recount how the same conflict led to a new understanding of what it meant to be a Christian.

Peter was led by a vision to the house of the pagan centurion, Cornelius. He preached the gospel to them. And as he saw the effects of his preaching, he came to understand that the revelation about Jesus Christ was not meant exclusively for the Jews (Acts 10 :1-48). Peter then returned to Jerusalem, where members of the circumcision party criticized him : "Why did you preach to the uncircumcised men and eat with them?"

Peter described what had happened, and his opponents glorified God (Acts 11 :1-18). This was a moment of growth for Peter, for the Christians in Jerusalem, and, consequently, for the

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Church. The Jewish-Christians became aware that God intended the "good-news" to be preached also to the Gentiles.

But the process by which they came to this insight included a creative tension between competing viewpoints and the expression of hostile feelings. In a word conflict and anger led to growth in the Church.

VATICAN

II

The debates during the Second Vatican Council provide a more recent example of how conflict and anger can lead to growth. When, for example, terms such as "college of bishops" and "collegial" were first introduced on the Council floor, they sounded to many like a serious threat to Papal authority and infallibility. Reactions were strong, and feelings were aroused.

More liberal theologians, like Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger, competed with more conservative theologians to show how "collegiality" had always been part of the Church's tradition. They explained it· over and over again. They produced four pages of catechism-like questions and answers to calm the bishops' fears and win them over to their viewpoint. · They lobbied and politicked. They organized power groups. They were willing to tight for what they saw to be for the growth of the Church. The result is the statement on collegiality in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium).

Another issue was the truth of Scripture. At first there was great fear among biblical scholars that the Council would make a very conservative statement about the kind of truth contained in the Old and New Testaments, a statement which they would find difficult to accept in view of what we know today about the Bible. The first document on Revelation included such a conservative statement. But it was rejected. Then, the professors at the Biblical Institute in Rome worked hard to formulate a teaching that would be both faithful to the tradition of the Church and respectable in terms of contemporary biblical scholarship. When the new statement was ready, one of the professors began selling it to the members of the Council's Theological Commission. He drove around Rome one Sunday afternoon, visiting those members of the Commission who seemed most favorably disposed to the new teaching. ·He talked to each one individually, trying to persuade him that this teach-

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ing was consistent with the traditions of the Church. The results can be found in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum).

Such examples could be multiplied. But these suffice to show that conflict was at the heart of Vatican II. Theologians were vying with each other to gain a hearing for their viewpoints.

They got angry at the tactics of their opponents. Their hostile feelings provided new creative energy. What was the issue?

Was it merely a struggle for power? Were they wanting to dominate those who disagreed with them? Or were they concerned for the overall growth of the Church? Once again, it is difficult to determine motives. But certsinly some of their motivation reflected a real concern that the Church might grow and mature by understanding her hierarchical structure in terms of collegiality and by gaining a deeper appreciation of the type of truth contained in the Scripture. At first the intense competition-the lobbying, the strategy sessions, etc.seemed to belong more at a political convention, a union rally or a session of Congress, than at an ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church. But the Church in its members is just as human as any other institution. And the Holy Spirit was at work in and through the human process of competition.

Conflict and anger led to growth in the Church during Vatican II. THE PRESENT

We now live in a time of renewal, a renewal based on Vatican II. It is a time marked by an almost despairing confusion.

John W. O'Malley has attributed this ¡confusion to the fact that the Council itself "is an inadequate expression of what is required today and, indeed, of what is actually happening today.

We are not experiencing a 'reform' as that term is traditionally understood as a correction, or revival, or development, or even updating. We are experiencing a transformation, even a revolution" ["Reform, Historical Consciousness, and Vatican II's Aggiornamento," Theological Stuides 32 (1971) 573-601].

It is also a time of conflict. Different understandings of how the Church is to renew herself are struggling with each other in parish meetings, in Catholic schools, in diocesan Senates, in religious and lay communities, and in the Curia

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offices on Vatican Hill. By actions, more than by words, different views are being expressed. Some are saying: "Hang on to the past. Renew by cutting out what no longer fits. Add to the past. Put new life into what we have been doing." Others cry: "Accommodate the past. Adjust to our present situation. Facilitate new growth and development. But be sure it is in harmony with the past." More radical types call for a deep transformation or revolution: "Break cleanly with the past. Be creative. Today's problems are unique. They demand unique solutions." These different voices echo the voices heard in Jerusalem in the conflict over the Jewish law. And they are not unlike the voices heard behind the scenes at the Vatican Council.

Conflict is a fact in the Church today. Some of us experience it more directly than others. But we all feel the tension it produces. How do we respond? One of the greatest dangers is the temptation to run from¡ the pain involved. We can run back to the past, or simply run away from the present. But retrenchment and discouragement are both wrong because they fail to entertain the possibility that the Holy Spirit might be speaking to the Church in and through the present tension and confusion. We might better learn to live with conflict. We might better welcome the pain as a sign of new possibilities and new life, rather than run from it in fear. Early Christianity and Vatican II teach us that conflict and anger may sometimes be necessary for growth. Our task is to determine the extent to which that is true in our present situation.

To do this we might try to avoid either one of two extremes.

The doctrinaire "Liberal" sees all the past as a hindrance, all institutions as enslaving and all good as coming from something other than what we now possess. The doctrinaire "consenâ&#x20AC;˘ative" sees all change as dangerous, unsettling and basically a betrayal of the past. Both attitudes are wrong because they originate iii" fear. The "liberal" won't commit himself to any existing value for fear that it might prove to be wrong and eventually be denied, whereas the "conser-vative" won't experiment with change for fear that what we have experienced will be utterly destroyed.

A much healthier response is to accept our present situation with all its tensions and confusion, to be calmly open to the

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ambiguities of the present and the future, and still to remain fearless in our choice of Christianity and the Church. This is not an easy task. lt requires a certain maturity. But we have models from the past to guide us. Historical circumstances forced the first Jewish-Christians to face some very deep questions about who they were and how they were to live their faith in the world around them. We face similar questions today.

Like them, we do not have easy, clear-cut answers. All we can do is try different ways and allow room for conflict and competition between them. We must be willing to fight for what we think is right. But we must be motivated by a deep concem for new growth in the Church.

Religious education today, whether for youth or adults, will have to prepare us to live with ¡conflict. It should put us in touch with our Catholic heritage. lt should make us alert and alive to our present situation. But it should also put us in touch with our feelings, the feelings experienced in conflict situations. How can we discover the patterns of our anger and fear? How can we become more aware of our hostile feelings?

How can we see them as potential creative energy? How can we discover the action of the Holy Spirit? Religious education should include the methods and techniques required to answer these important questions.

Anger is one of the most powerful feelings experienced in conflict situations. It can be a source of human energy. It can give men and women the drive to accomplish great things. It can release their creative powers. It can also promote unity and love in the Church, or it can destroy the Christian community. It can bring peace or the sword. It all depends on why and how it is used. In the past, Catholic education taught that all anger was suspicious. Feelings were considered the most vulnerable part of man, the area where Satan most easily takes hold and leads man astray. Anger could not be reconciled with love. But today, we know that love-hate relationships are possible, and can be creative. Hostile feelings are themselves ambiguous and ambivalent. They can be used to manipulate others. Or they can lead to greater intimacy and love. No one bothers getting angry with someone about whom he cares nothing. To be alive in the Church today means becoming more awat¡e of our feelings. It means accepting them

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and loving them, as part of our affective personalities. It means learning how to express them in a way that will promote growth, both our own growth and the growth of others.

We must, in a word, learn how to make the conflicts and anger we experience contribute to growth in the Church.

Thomas Sweetse>¡. S.J.

Catholic Absenteeism: Fact and Future

Absenteeism in the Catholic Chu1¡ch is a reflection of a withdmwal phenomenon on the Arnerican scene in general.

Catholic absenteeism is a fact today. There is statistical evidence of a current trend in the American Catholic Church on the part of laymen, priests and religious to withdraw their support in the form of money, time and commitment of the structured, hierarchical Church. Some analysts have laid the blame for this withdrawal on Vatican II for opening up too many doors. Not only did the "fresh air" come in but the staunch Catholic doctrine was blown out. Others lay the blame with the radical innovators and progressive theologians who have taken the pronouncements of Vatican II and have sown dissension in the ranks. Still others find fault with conservative reactionaries who have held up the renewal process that the Council began and consider the Catholic withdrawal phenomenon as a result of frustrated reformers and advocates of change.

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While there is truth in all of these analyses, it is the contention of this paper that the root cause for the withdrawal lies not within the Catholic Church but in the wider phenomenon of the American cultural ethos and that the absenteeism in the Catholic Church is a reflection of a withdrawal phenomenon on the American scene in general.

PARTICIPATION AND ISOLATION

Before attempting to establish the relationship between the American cultural ethos and the Catholic Church's problem with absenteeism, a few presuppositions must be stated as "givens" upon which the rest of the paper rests. These givens arise out of the historical background of the Catholic Church in America. The roots of Catholicism in America have been ethnic and urban; that is, Catholics arrived on the scene after the culture had begun and had already established the cultural "rules"; and when the Catholics arrived their first settlements were in the urban ghettoes and inner cities. Because of these two factors, the history of the Catholic Church in America has been marked by a dialect of participation and isolation.

On the participation side, the Catholic immigrants struggled to "prove" themselves as "good" Americans by volunteering to fight the country's wars, police its cities and do its dirty work.

They understood that in a pragmatic culture such as is America's, the best way to prove one's identity with the culture was to do something.

On the isolation side, the Catholics always felt on the "outside" because of their unique religious heritage. Since they were "captured" in urban ghettoes and could not flee, they sought to preserve this heritage by constructing independent parochial schools, parallel social organizations and separate service groups. The Knights of Columbus, Catholic Auxiliaries and Extension Volunteers are but a few of these Catholic "institutions." It was this American Catholic dialectic that provided material for Greeley's The Catholic Experience in which¡ his underlying hypothesis was "that from the earliest days of this republic the progressive 'Americanizers' ... have won the verbal and intellectual battles and lost the real wars of power and control to the conservative 'anti-Americanizers.' " Granted that this tension has been a part of American Cath-

ABSENTEEISM

49

olic history since its inception, there seems to be a shift at the present time in the direction of complete integration and Americanization of the American Catholic Church. As the isolationist mystique loses ground so do the institutions that represented that mentality. Catholic schools are closing for lack of funds and enrollment, Catholic groups such as the Knights of Columbus are down in membership, and Catholic service organizations such as hospitals and orphanages are being turned over to the government. These are all indicators that today's American Catholic is more a part of the general American ethos and as a result experiences the same conditioning and .shaping factors as does any other mainstream American.

This, then, is the underlying presupposition of this article: that the Catholic ghetto is gone, that American Catholics are in the mainstream of American culture and that because of this, they will react to the culture in the same way as will the â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘average" American.

THE AMERICAN ETHOS

But how is the "average" American of today reacting to his culture? To answer this it is necessary first to spell out a few characteristics of the present American culture. Because of its pragmatic past, the country has developed a highly efficient and highly specialized culture. Granted that the culture is a complex mixture of many ingredients, the influence of urbanization with its stress on division of labor, impersonal functional forms of communication and leveling mechanisms, of bureaucracy with its stress on efficiency, specific codes of activity and behavior, and its quid-pro-quo reward system, and of technology with its stress on precision, mechanization and expansion, have won the day in determining the American ethos.

As a result, the "average" American feels powerless in the face of such a foolproof system. These feelings of worthlessness which stifle initiative and creativity are causing AmeriCans to react and their reaction is one of inaction. That is, either physically or psychologically they are withdrawing their support of the cultural ethos. This withdrawal takes many forms ranging from ex-migration out of the country to simply not doing the job that the person is programmed to do, i.e., j Dbabsenteeism. There appear to be, however, two attitudes at the

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root of this phenomenon; the one coming from the recent ethnic who is on the conservative, status quo end of the sociopolitical spectrum and the other coming from the mainline American middle class who have become disenchanted with the establishment and its control of creativity and individuality.

The fonner variety has only recently been integrated into the mainstream of society through hard work and sacrifice, and now once there, sees society taking his new status away from him by means of housing ordinances, integration laws and leniency to protestors. His reaction to this flux is an unconscious frustration that his new fought-for status and position is not recognized by the culture anymore. The urban-bureaucratic leveling process has taken away any prestige he thought he would be enjoying once he escaped from his ethnic culture.

His response is a subtle withdrawal from cooperating in or contributing to the American "way of life," which is now failing to protect his interests. His withdrawal takes the form of apathy, lack of initiative and an "1-don't-give-a-damn" form of absenteeism.

On the other end of the spectrum is that variety of American who has been in the mainstream of American life long enough to know what it has to offer and is beginning to realize that that is not enough. The growing number of young "protestors" who are from middle class backgrounds reflects this feeling of disenchantment with the American technostructure.

Their withdrawal tendencies are reflected in rising drug use, revolutionary rhetoric and in new life-styles that challenge such sacred American customs as monogomy and private ownership. The answer, then, to the question-How is the average American of today reacting to his culture" ?-is that he is reacting by seeking ways of not acting within the structure.

WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS

If our original supposition is correct, that the average Cath-

olic is part and parcel of this new American ethos, then the withdrawal dynamics present in the general American culture will become visible in his life as well, especially with respect to his affiliation to the Catholic Church. This is true not only because the Catholic of today is no longer an outsider to

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51

the American culture, but also because the Catholic Church, insofar as it is itself a bureaucratic, hierarchical institution, participates in the general American socio-political system.

As a result, the individual Catholic, in translating his discontent with American culture to his affiliation with the Church, is more than ever before tempted to withdraw his support of the structured Church.

As is the case with the general ethos, this withdrawal symptom comes from both ends of the conservative-liberal spectrum, from those who have only recently emerged from the isolation of the religious ghetto and from those who have been integrated from birth into the culture and are now discontent in their association with the "establishment," i.e., the Church.

The former group is disturbed by the changing character of the Church since Vatican II, a Church they considered as built on the rock of Peter and thus unchangeable. Just when they can afford to send their children to Catholic schools they discover that the teachers are spreading strange new doctrines.

The Catholic layman is unable to challenge this new theology because it is in the hands of specialists. As a result he feels powerless and unable to cope with the new doctrines and so registers his discontent by withholding support of the schools and parish activities, by taking his children out of the schools, by hanging on to the old structures wherever they continue to function and finally, in exasperation, by giving up reception of the sacraments altogether because they no longer protect his interests and meet his needs. In a word, he loses faith in the institutional Church.

On the other end of the spectrum lies the "liberal" Catholic who has been thoroughly Americanized from birth. He was most likely at one time highly involved in Catholic programs and has probably given years of service to the Church, possibly as a priest or religious. But due to the inconsistencies between the empirical structure and the spiritual ideal he grows at first angry, then frustrated and finally apathetic. This is so because he discovers his own efforts are to no avail in attempting a solution. The institution is too cumbersome and monolithic to allow change. The result is withdrawal from the structure in pursuit of a more authentic expression of his religious ideals.

Just how widespread this loss of faith in the institutional

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Church has become is not clear. There is little data available by which to judge the above statements. But this much can be said: If it is true that the "average" American is losing faith in his culture and is "dropping-out," and if it is true that the¡ Catholic of today has become Americanized to the extent that he is also experiencing this same loss of faith, and also that this loss of faith is carried over to his affiliation with the Catholic Church, then it seems clear that the problems facing the Catholic Church are not the result of either ill-planned renewal efforts which have resulted in confusion on the part of the laity, or a failure to implement the directives of Vatican II which resulted in frustration on the part of "involved" Catholics. But rather, these problems are the result of the Catholic Church reflecting the general apathy and withdrawal symptoms of the American people as a whole because the institutional Church has of late become more highly identified with the dominant American culture.

THE UNDERLYING NOTION OF "CHURCH"

This is more than a sociological study; it has theological intentions as well. For that reason, the matter of Catholic absenteeism can not be treated as if it were one of many other phenomena in our present day culture. Instead, the attempt will be made to confront the underlying notion of "Church" and in such a confrontation expose an energy source that not only will help restore a vision of hope in the future to disgruntled and disenchanted Catholics; but also, since the Catholic Church can be considered as an accepted participant in American culture, then this same energy source can help revive the drooping spirits of the American people as a whole.

Our first task, then, is to uncover the underlying notion of "Church." In other words, what are the essential elements of the Catholic Church" Is it the hierarchical structure, the inviolable status of the Pope, the directives of canon law, the dispensation of sacraments, the parish church or the Vatican?

Surely none of these gets to the heart of it. The essence of "Church" goes beyond these temporary structures and resides instead in a group of people, a People of God. Once the focus of what is "Church" is related to a human reality instead of to a building, system or structure, then two words emerge

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that describe the underlying reality of Church; i.e., symbol and servant.

First, the Church as symbol. By this is meant that the Church points to a reality beyond itself; and the reality to which it points is God's self-gift, the reality that God is seeking to reveal himself throughout history to mankind. The primordial occasion of his self-disclosure was in the person of Jesus Christ. In him the divine self-gift and the free human response to this gifting reached the limit of its expression. And this relationship did not cease with the death of Christ. But rather as the Resurrection of Christ manifested, the divinehuman relationship continues in history not only in the risen Christ but also in the visible acknowledgement of this risen presence which is the "Church." In this way, the essence of the Church is the symbolic representation of the divine-human relationship embodied in the Risen Christ. The Church has meaning only insofar as it points to a reality beyond itself, the Christ event.

But the Church as symbol is not the whole reality. The Church is also servant in that it stands in the place of all humanity in seeking to respond to God's self-disclosure and offer to mankind of his personal friendship. The essence of "Church,"-again understanding the term to mean a human reality as the People of God and not as a static structure or edifice--is one of standing in the middle of the divine-human relationship; on the one side as the symbol of God's self-manifestation and gift of himself to men, and on the other side as the servant representing mankind's free response to this divine self-gifting. This is the role Christ plays and the Church is the visible expression and explicitation of this role in history.

So much for the theology of Church. But how does that relate to the sociological phenomenon of the current American malaise? The two are related in this way; the Church as symbol and servant can be the kl~:~ts for charism, a charism centered in a vision of hope in a meaningful future. It is this charism that is the source of energy needed to restore the American spirit.

Max Weber understood the energy and potential for change that resides in a charismatic leader or movement. It can change the entire course and direction of history. It is just such a

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realization of energy in a charismatic impulse that provides an alternative to American and Catholic absenteeism. Rather than giving up or dropping out of a system that seems immovable and overpowering, it is possible to introduce a charismatic "irrationality" into the system and shake its foundations.

There are evidences of such charismatic innovators in the country today. The Berrigan brothers, Pete l\iacCloskey, the Republican who is challenging his own party's president, and Ralph Nader, the consumers' advocate, are examples. These individuals are capturing the imaginations of frustrated and powerless individuals and restoring hope in them of the possibility of a fresh start and a new direction.

The Church is in a unique position to provide a locus for such charismatic impulses. It is no longer the adolescent child waiting to be accepted into the adult American world. It has reached that stage and because of that it has a responsibility to be the critic and innovator for change in the direction of a more human and freeing environment. Not that the Catholic Church is the unique locus for such charismatic innovations.

Ours is a pluralistic culture rich in its many possible expressions of hope and vision for the future. But it must not give up its role as symbol and servant to the American culture. This is crucial in an age in which the dominant culture has the capacity to crush any form of criticism and opposition. The Church must be the protector of the voices "crying out" to be heard. It must allow the Spirit to cry out without reprisal.

The most insistent cry being heard is that there is a future in hope. And the vision of hope the Church holds out to the culture is that men might be able to fully realize their potential and capabilities, not to the detriment of others but in cooperation and union with other men, i.e., that men might become more fully human. Teilhard de Chardin was the great apostle of this dream and he wrote: "The more I consider the fundamental question of the future of the eat'th, the more it appears to me that the generative principle of its unification is finally to be sought, not in the sole contemplation of a single Truth or in the sole desire for a single Thing, but in the common attraction exercised by a Single Being. For on the one hand, if the synthesis of the Spirit is to be brought about in its entirety (and this is the

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only possible definition of progress) it can only be done, in the last resort, through the meeting, center to center, of human units, such as can only be realized in a universal, mutual love.

And on the other hand there is but one possible way in which human elements, innumerably diverse by nature, can love one another: it is by knowing themselves all to be centered upon a single 'super-center' common to all, to which they can only attain, each at the extreme of himself, through their unity. " 'Love one another, recognizing in the heart of each of you the same God who is being born.' Those words, fi1¡st spoken two thousand years ago, now begin to reveal themselves as the essential structural law of what we call progress and evolution.

They enter the scientific field of cosmic energy and its necessary laws.

"Indeed, the more I strive, in love and wonder, to measure the huge movements of past Life in the light of paleontology, the more I am convinced that this majestic process, which nothing can arrest, can achieve its consummation only in becoming Christianized.''

Terence E. Tierney

Sacramental Reconciliation: Act.of Worship or Counselling Experience I

The identity of the Sacrament of Penance is at 8take today.

The problem must be resolved if it is to resume its rightful place in the life of the People of God.

In this era where pluriformity so characterizes every area of life and variety is courted as being valuable in itself, Penance struggles to discover its identity. While the essence of Sacramental Reconciliation is not being called into question by theologians, its liturgical and canonical expression is certainly not faring quite as well. Since the the confession of one's sinfulness, the recognition of one's need for repentance and reconciliation is required by Jesus for entrance into his kingdom, and given the Church's affirmation of this as revelation together with the subsequent doctrinal position advanced with regard to this sacrament, no one needs to fear for the imminent demise of the sacrament of Penance.

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However, the form which this sacrament must work within is currently under attack for various reasons, by enthusiastic amateurs and reputable theologians alike. Moreover, while communal penance services appear to be well accepted, as well as greatly attended, and forms for general absolution are attempting to break out of the category of the "limited exception"-not to speak of the serious illness plaguing private auricular confession-the present indication is that not only is the liturgical fmm for sacramental Penance an open question, but also that the very identity of the sacrament is suffering from schizophrenia. It will remain for history to decide the liturgical form Penance must embody in every age, but it devolves upon contemporary man to resolve the identity dilemma of this sacrament before its pre-eminent position, long enjoyed among the faith community of the People of God is lost.

The elemental question facing the Church as regards sacramental reconciliation is whether this sacrament is essentially an act of worship or first and foremost a forum for guidance and counselling. Now admittedly it can be both in given instances; but this does not address the issue of Penance's true sacramental identity and, therefore, is not to the point of our discussion. Any person or sacrament which recognizes itself in its essence knows its own proper identity and identifies itself to others. Granted sacramental identity there flows from this identity a necessary flexibility, (there can always be accommodation to changing situations, however in these instances full signifying identity is not totally being actualized). This is not to say that identity is lost; rather what we have presented is a variation of expression to meet a specific pastoral need.

Good pastoral practice always addresses the situation as it arises with its own uniqueness. However, the exception or particular circumstances must never become the rule for determining general practice lest the identity of the sacrament be thrown into confusion. In short, counselling may be necessary to a person's spiritual health in a specific confessional situation but it must never become the nwdu.~ operandi of the sacrament itself.

Confessor and penitents alike ought to be fully aware that the sacrament of Penance is liturgy and liturgy is worship arising from a faith experience. Therefore, we must celebrate

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the sacrament of Penance in a manner that focuses attention on the Lord not solely on the sins of the patient. This is precisely what genuine sacramental liturgy effects and what counselling seldom accomplishes. Counselling focuses the attention upon the individual and his sins rather than facilitating the penitent's turning toward the Lord in praise and thanksgiving.

In this case, both the confessor and penitent alike become preoccupied with specific failures and their causes instead of experiencing the presence of the Lord, who is with us in a most efficacious and healing manner as his Church offers liturgical celebration, ( cf. Sacrosanctwn Consillium no. 7). The main attraction for our confession should be what Jesus does for us in his mercy through this public celebration of his official presence of grace in the public history of mankind.

PENANCE, AN ACT OF WORSHIP

Penance is pre-eminently an act of worship. When we go to confession we proclaim to God that we are sinners, and declare to and through the Church our failm¡es and our belief in God's mercy and justice. We say, in effect, "I am a miserable wretch but you, 0 Lord, are God Most High, Our Savior and our King." We address God with his true title, "Abba," Father, and ask him to deliver us from our sinful state as he did the Hebrews of old, with his mighty hand and outstretched arm.

In this sacrament we are the prodigal sons returning ashamedly home for our just deserve after a bout with loose living and immorality, hoping that our Father will understand and cast aside unrelenting justice and deal with our hearts mercifully.

In this attitude we find an example of true worship.

With every act of repentance we worship God as Father, Son and Spirit. A Father who is merciful; a Son who is Savior; a Spirit who is Healer. In the Sacrament of Penance we address God by name and in faith see his face revealed to us in love. When confessing sins a person embodies a four fold act of worship: man speaks to God and God in turn addresses man; man offers to God his sinful self and God responds by ¡offering to man his self-revealing grace. All this is accomplished within an ecclesial setting, with the priest as the agent of reconciliation. Sacramental reconciliation is both sign and symbol. It points to that which is beyond itself and effects

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what it intends to signify. This sacrament is a graced event and as such forms an act of worship whereby God is praised and man uplifted by Divine Love. It is a healing encounter, to be sure, but the healing is accomplished by divine grace. This healing should not be construed as healing by human psychological counseling.

The !}lOtivation for confessing sins should come primarily from faith, and not out of fear or guilt. Penance is a sacrament of faith for in it we affirm Jesus as Lord of our life. We recognize ourselves lying upon a stretcher suffering from some spiritual disease, and call out to Jesus who alone can effect a proper cure. In an even greater demonstration of faith, we move toward the Lord before he can approach us because we believe that he has the words of eternal life. We are healed by our faith in Jesus, not by human strength or psychic games.

Biblical literature testifies decidedly that a spirit of repentance is essentially linked with faith. Healing is the result of one's faith not his actions (save when those actions reflect faith).

Confession here is viewed as a form of transcendence. In Penance we encounter gratia sanans-gratia elevans (healing grace--elevating grace). In fact, God gives us not only the grace to overcome temptations and persevere in love, but this grace moves us to repent once we have sinned, so that sacramentally, in the presence of the community we might be reconciled completely to the Church as well as to the Lord. In the Sacrament of Penance God turns toward man in grace. He makes himself accessible to man so that moved by grace, man might be accessible to healing. Confession, like any genuine act of worship is a response to God in faith, hope and love.

The decisive element in sacramental reconciliation is the reverent homage paid to the Lord, manifested by the outward sign of entering the confessional box or Penance room, and the hope of salvation and rejuvenated life which is concommitant with such acts of praise and homage. The other essential element is thanksgiving. All worship can be traced to a thankful heart. We praise and honor God precisely as thanksgiving, and do so as a result of a faith experience, the full import of which is only completely apprehended in community. This foundation in thanksgiving gives rise to all acts of true worship, especially

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the Eucharist which even takes its name from thanksgiving.

Since the Eucharist is the apex of thanksgiving and the fount from which the thanking heart enjoys refreshing dtink, as a sacrament it forms the core around which all other sacraments rally.

Penance, therefore, is no more connected with Eucharist than any other sacrament. The essential linking of the two sacraments has, in the past, created confusion and misuse.

The present state of confession can find many of its atrophying moments as linked to the above mentioned relationship. We may note here that clearly the events of the post Vatican II experience have hurt the sacrament by focusing on the Eucharist and its expression (prodding the people to receive communion often and stressing that one did not have to go to confession prior to communion if they were not in serious sin. The emphasis on the full expression of eucharist-both species, et al.) without dissolving the necessary link between the two sacraments which had arisen over the course of time and grown dull with the dross of centuries to the point of aberration.

WORSHIP, ESSENTIALLY CHRISTOLOGICAL

Worship for the Christian is essentially Christological.

Christ is the touchstone and foundation for Christian worship.

Our Lord's entire life was an act of worship to his Father.

He was totally open to the Father's will and obedient to the point of death. He submitted himself, in his supreme act of worship, the cross, to the grace and judgment of God. In like manner, man presents himself, as an adopted son of the heavenly Father, to that same grace and judgment in the very act of confession. It is man's act of worship, and thus forms a part of the Paschal Mystery which Christ left us as an everlasting remembrance.

The worship of the Church is always effected by the whole people. The individual joins with the community through a personal act of faith. The People of God are renewed and recreated in every act of worship. Therefore, Penance has an essential ecclesial form and identity. Sacramental reconciliation is not to be construed as individual worship, but must be viewed in its proper ecclesial setting. This is why formal confession, whether it be celebrated in a confessional box or Pen-

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ance room; is always situated or attached in some way to the Church itself. The building, which is the sign of the presence of God in the community, is the place in which the community gathers to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The penitent, therefore, is reconciled with God and also to the community, of which he is a member through baptism, and against which he has sinned by virtue of this baptismal relationship.

If worship is to be complete, it must always in some way be efficacious. Acts of worship must be prolonged throughout daily life. This explains why the Church, in its teaching concerning the sacrament of penance, requires a firm purpose of amendment on the pa.rt of the reconciled sinner. In so doing, the act of worship, which essentially constitutes the identity of Penance as a sacrament, is prolonged in every day life experiences.

RECONCILIATION, ESSENTIALLY A PROCESS

Sacramental reconciliation is essentially a process. This process begins with the historical realization of one's sinfulness and finds its fulfillment in liturgical celebration. The sacramental grace of the liturgical Penance completes the process of justification and one's contrition is recognized as sincere by the signing-the prolongation of this act of worship in the daily lives of the penitents. The full effect of the sacrament of Penance is climaxed in its formal celebration. Since the sacraments are actions of the Risen Lord in the life of the Church, Christ himself is the sacrament of Penance. Christ is the Sac.-ament of forgiveness of sins. Incarnation, then, anrl the sacrament of forgiveness are bound up with one another. God is encountered in Christ. Christ is the Sacrament of the Encounter with God. We know a person by the way he acts (the metaphysical given-as a being is so it acts). Therefore we recognize Christ in the forgiving of sins. To this extent Penance affirms Christ's existence, his mission (salvation), his lordship (judgment) -we affirm him in faith. Penance is a sacrament of faith.

Forgiveness of sins is essential to salvific activity. We need salvation because we have sinned. The first moment of salvation is repentance. Moreover, since Penance is a process, it is not accomplished in one single sacramental action but is effected

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over the long term beginning with initial recognition of sinfulness, the desire for formal sacramental reconciliation and the prolongation of this process of conversion and worship in the active living of a Christian existence. Both the pre-sacramental grace of repentance and the sacramental grace of the sacrament as a sacrament do not operate independently of one another. Rather together they form one single action of Christ effected over the long term process. The action of the penitent and the action of the priest form one act of worship.

Therefore, it can be established with reasonable certitude that sacramental penance is pre-eminently an act of worship and not a forum for pastoral counselling. The general rule that should obtain here is that counselling is usually out of place in this sacramental celebration. Fundamentally, the reason psychotherapy and clinical psychiatry require such numerous sessions is because only through a series of encounters can the doctor ascertain the knowledge necessary for genuine therapeutic results. The facts conceming the indi\â&#x20AC;˘idual's personal history and current problems arising from that history are a pre-requisite for true and proper healing. Logically then, in the confessional situation one lacks sufficient information, the possession of which is indispensable to pastoral counselling.

The sacrament of Penance cannot and should not supply this information.

The priest cannot possibly possess knowledge of the penitent's background nor his educational and emotional makeup.

Moreover, the character of the situation, for example, the confessional box and the screen conspire against the environment essential to therapeutic counselling. Perhaps through a long and drawn out questioning process the priest may just obtain the required personal self-revelation of the penitent (though we doubt it). We must, however, denounce this practice. Questioning the penitent merely to elicit the necessary information required for counselling is abortive to the sacrament. itself.

Wherefore, the sacrament no longer remains an act of worship and to that extent loses its sact¡amental identity.

"NOT TOO NOSEY"

A good pastoral dictum for any priest could be stated quite simply, "don't get too nosey." The people resent this and above

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all the sacrament does not require this approach for its validity or effectiveness. Generally speaking, priests should not give advice in confession. More healing results from kindness and gentle mercy than platitudinous advice. To offer a kind word and apply a firm but tender correction, if this be required, is infinitely more in tune with the message of Jesus and closer to the essence of Sacred Scripture on this matter. This, I suggest is the more authentic approach to Penance even amid the age of personalism. If perchance an individual penitent seems to be in need of counselling it would be much better to attempt getting him to seek advice on the specific problem or cause thereof from a licensed doctor who can deal with the trouble in a thoroughly professional setting.

Louis Monden in his book Sin, Liberty and Law tells us that the priest in the confessional is no public attorney looking for an exact reconstruction of the crime, nor is he a psychiatrist who must decide how accountable the defendent is, nor a psychotherapist who must rid the penitent of his complexes and his unconscious inhibitions. He is one who in God's name utters the Lord's releasing word over sin. What the penitent tells the priest is only a sign of what he tells God. He confesses more than what he expresses in words.

We must remember that the priest's judgment, his human meeting with sinfulness, is but a sign and, as Monden tell us, often a very imperfect and shadowy sign of the merciful salvific judgment of God. God is not hampered by the limitations and mistakes of our human judgment.

We can then see with Monden that many a confession would be better if the priest were inspired not so much by an anxious solicitude for a complete enumeration of sin but rather by the need to allow the penitent to express as authentically as he can his personal awareness of sin. In any questioning must be done, it should be carried out prudently and infrequently.

If the foremost attention of Sacramental reconciliation is directed toward the subject, then what does Penance become if' not a therapy session with an incompetent counselor? Psychologizing within this sacrament is a grave danger facing the contemporary Church in the light of the renewed interest in psychology among the members of the clergy and the philosophical currents of personaLism operative within the life of

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today's Church. One consequence of this type of thrust might be the total elimination of devotional confession.

Personalizing one's confession is not what is at issue here.

This practice is certainly laudable, to be sure, for it stresses more genuinely the sign value of the sacrament and purifies the quality of one's awareness of personal sinfulness. Since some find verbalization of their inner selves at best difficult and at worse impossible, confession of sins will always find different expressions depending on the individual personalities involved.

But in any event confession as an act of worship must be preserved.

The priest, his words and actions, is a sign of the mercy of God. God is here inviting, urging the sinner to adopt a new life style, to be recreated anew, to meet the Lord in and through the Church, (ecclesial dimension). The priest is free (prudently) to use this moment of religious encounter with the God of mercy to offer guidance and propose possible and helpful means toward accomplishing and sustaining conversion, the effect of which could be the pt¡olongation of this act of worship in the daily life of the individual. However, the goal of spiritual direction is not the end to which this sacrament is to be directed. Counselling, it must be remembered, must always exist as the exception to the rule in confessional practice.

COUNSELLING IN THE CONFESSIONAL

Historically, counselling as spiritual direction has been associated with the sacrament but not to the perfection of Penance as worship. Counselling per se endangers the spiritual character of confession as worship. By its very nature it tends to profane the sacred liturgical event that is Penance. Likewise, well intentioned confessors have in the past created conflicts of conscience within certain individuals resulting from advice uttered in haste. Lou is Monden observes for us that aversion to a conversation forced on the penitent in confession, anxiety about a too human curiosity, put a damper on many a Christian's enthusiasm for the sacrament of penance and make him unwilling to approach it with confidence. The sort of prying spoken of here can be viewed in its historical roots after the Council of Trent (1545-1563). However, the thinking of the Council Fathers was conditioned by problems that are

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not our problems. Trent focused (rightly at the time) upon a systematic approach to sacramentology. It outlined for the priest the manner of the sacramental form and the information sought after for proper and valid judgment concerning contrition.

Such categories as species and number, proximate and remote, sufficient and insufficient, free and necessary, and doubtful and certain related to the matter of the sacrament. The answers to which all directed themselves to work toward a more inquizative approach to penance in order to obtain the necessary facts on which to base a judgment (this judgmental aspect of confession is a legacy from Trent). Today as psychology breaks into the picture there has been concommittently an intensification of the investigative angle of penance.

PENANCE ROOM

The current thrust operative within this approach to sacramental reconciliation is spurred on by the prevailing philosophies of personalism and existentialism and the events and attitudes flowing from the post Vatican II experience.

The inherent danger that obtains in this new modus of pastoral-sacramental practice is precisely the question of the loss of sacramental identity. The problem which must be addressed is : "Does the Penance room promote sacramental reconciliation as an act of worship or will this new approach to the outward form of the sacrament create a proclivity toward pastoral counselling?" Ultimately the resolution of these questions devolves upon the systematic theologian who specializes in sacramentology and the magisterium of the Church, which retains the freedom and right to determine the form of the sacrament.

Their judgments must be founded on adequate understanding of theology, scripture, tradition, cultural and liturgical factors and prevailing philosophical insights. Our responsibility is to call attention to this matter and exhort our most distinguished scholars to pursue the issue here with proper analysis. If the official ecclesiastical authorities are supplied with factual and practical knowledge in this regard then the chances for an enlightened determination of the form of Penance will be greatly ¡increased.

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While the Penance room retains a laudable forum for the healing mercy of God, it likewise promotes a counselling environment. Oftentimes the talking out of problems will be facilitated by this atmosphere but perhaps at the expense of the sacrament as liturgical act of worship. It appears that the Penance room is a better forum for true and prayerful liturgy but this does not cancel the reality which faces us, namely, that abberations in this matter might over the long term do violence to the identity of Penance. This is not to say Penance rooms should be forbidden or even merely tolerated. Rather, it states that we have first of all the obligation to establish the identity of sacramental reconciliation within today's culture and only then proceed to initiate new forms and structures. At least then we could be reasonably assured that what we attempt to change will be met with success and prove beneficial to all. If the identity of anything is questioned or confused, the changing of forms will be of no avail. We must be prepared to answer the question "what is it?" before we can attempt an answer to "how is it?"

This, I believe, is not an alarmist position rather only a prudent desire to head off any future crisis by searching to discover the causes and deal with the problem at that level.

One's love for the Church and her sacramental signs should motivate this investigation. We call upon those much more expert than myself on this matter, to seek out the rationale behind the penance room and take the pains necessary to head off the possible identity crisis which practices such as this can inadvertently create.

Since man is at present seeking more fruitful occasions for genuine worship, it seems desirable that confession of sin and counselling should be carefully separated whenever and wherever possible. The viewing of confession as an act of worship is cel"tainly in concert with the prevailing elements within our ancient tradition and should be welcomed as a step forward.

The Sacrament of Penance must be rediscovered so that once again it can be identified properly. This sacrament must be God-centered instead of man-centered. Thus it will reflect authentically the mind of the Sacred Authors and promote and insure a more genuine ecclesial dimension.

It should be evident that the correct emphasis of Penance

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as an act of worship tends to raise sacramental reconciliation to a new level of integrity. It is risky business, to be sure, when the function of the sacrament more inclines it to be psychological rather than liturgical. This sacrament and its operation should be at the service of the spiritual nature of man and his ecclesial and interpersonal relationship to God and his Church, not employed in the service of psychology. These remarks should not be construed as attacking or demeaning the value of other sciences in themselves or as they find employment in the service of the Church for the good of souls. The purpose of this paper is to call attention to a potential crisis.

The identity of Penance is what is at stake here. This sacrament cannot be defined in terms of effective psychology. Therefore, a proper separation between the two is required in the sacramental area of Church life. For this reason theologians of differing disciplines should see their way clear to investigate this matter further, coming up with some theological, canonical and pastoral-liturgical conclusions which can aid the magisterium, with an enlightened and open heart, to determine properly the future form of Penance and insure its identity.

Gerald F. Kreyche

Is this the Same Church?

Both the Right and Left are asking that questi1m.

They should begin by asking 1vhat prompted it in the first place.

Is this the same Church? Catholics who are still interested in being Catholics, whethet¡ laymen, religious or clergy, continue to raise that question which has plagued many of them since the close of Vatican II. Many are tempted to respond with a simple ye., or no answer to that probing question, but to do so would be unworthy. Such a direct response would be a non-answer, never having addressed itself to the problem.

Instead, let me propose an indirect means of getting at an answer by suggesting that we must first question the question.

That is, we must first ask what are the attitudes, conditions and environment (Umwelt) which prompt raising the issue of the Church's identity. This phenomenological prelude is necessary to help put things in perspective.

Is this the same Church? The question could easily be switched to an alumnus visiting his alma mater asking, "Is this the same college?" What he would find is the growth of a "university without walls" concept. He sees students deciding on their own admission applications, housewives and policemen

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being given blocks of academic credit for their "life experiences," and courses of instruction offered in which no failing grades are permitted.

The question could as easily be switched to a mother returning to the business world now that her family is raised. When she takes a look at microfilm and magnetic tape memory file systems, the Xerox 7000 reproducer and reducer and the IBM 370j40 computer, she would seriously wonder if she were not on another planet.

Why are these identity questions arising today, questions which are soul searching and unnerving, questions we thought were answered once and for all long ago? Who do we have, in the inimitable words of Howard Cosell, "a whole new ballgame"?

We might regard our situation as parallel to a first time visitor to Cape Kennedy, an experience of Future Shock. More accurately, however, I think we should call it a tremor of "after shock." It is "after shock" because while we can keep up with a modicum of change, we find ourselves falling behind in trying to stay apace with the rapidization of change witnessed in the world today. On a treadmill, the farther we ,get behind, the more difficult it is to catch up, to say nothing of moving ahead. The businessman today must be abreast of computer technology, acquire new degrees (such as the MBA) and attend various seminars on how to keep from alienating this or that ethnic group in his employ.

THE KNOWLEDGE IMPLOSION

Although the world has witnessed a dramatic knowledge explosion, more important is the less heralded knowledge implosion, the concern with the nature of the self, prompting the question, "Who am I?" We have moved from the medieval characterization of man as homo religiosus to the contemporary homo anxiuB. As one philosopher notes, we have shifted our views from man as a focus of values to man as a center of forces. We feel pushed and pulled in all directions.

If the above is true of individual man, it is also true of collective man-the institution. Their aspirations and anxieties are similar. The institution has its own identity problem and when faced with extinction or irrelevance, often chooses the

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latter, following the primary Jaw governing its being, the Jaw of survival.

Given the current situation of collective man (the institution) and man the individual, we discover change also in the relationship obtained between the two. In the animal kingdom, the individual is for the sake of the species which is another name for "animalH writ large or for "animal institution."

Most businesses, schools and nations view the relationship of the individual member to their own enterprise in much the same way as obtained in the animal kingdom. In the nitty gritty of survival contests, it tells the individual that he is expendable. What assumes first priority are all the important purposes and goals of the company, school or nation.

But within the last decade some minor revolutions have occurred. Black Americans, Catholics in Northern Ireland, subjected peoples in colonial empires, students in colleges, citizens whose consciences saw war as a moral issue--all have asked for a reappraisal of the relationship of themselves to the institution. They are demanding a change of emphasis from that of their serving the institution to that of the institution serving them. If they felt the need for justification and l'ationale, they could look to the Old and New Testaments.

Blacks could declare with the Jews of the Diaspora that unless Elohim was a God of liberation, he was no God at all and his word was it¡relevant. Others continued reading and saw there a highly instructive passage for all Pharasees, both ancient and contemporary. In that passage Christ tells us that the Sabbath was made for man.

Now the analogy of "Sabbath" to "institution" whether civil or ecclesiastical is so clear that it cannot be missed by fundamentalist or libertine. That simple teaching of Christ was so radical, few could accept it then; few can accept it now. At¡ various times in history, even the Church hierarchy refused to believe it, preferring to use the Church as an instrument of damnation instead of as a means of salvation.

THE HISTORICITY OF THE CHURCH

Yet that change instituted by Christ marked the infant Church something as different. Born in the world and in a sense 'not of the world;-¡ the Church was nonetheless subject to

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all of the strengths and weaknesses of its historicity. Among these were semetic and existential thinking, male chauvinism, a sense of destiny and a love of power. Yet it also tried to counteract the worldliness of its culture by emphasizing its own other-worldly concerns of spirituality and interiority.

(Later this spirituality and interiority, having grown to an extreme in some cases, needed correction by the Church becoming more worldly and social oriented.)

But if the Church grew up in Jerusalem, it also grew up in Antioch, Athens, Rome and elsewhere. And in each place, it affected and was affected by the prevH iling cultural milieu. In Greece, where speculative and categorical thinking prevailed, semetic and existential thinking was challenged and modified.

The Greek theory of truth as vision and aleithia countered the Hebrew notion of truth as hearing and as emet. The conflict was not only between a far removed unmoved mover and a Yahweh who was with his people, but between soul (psyche) and spirit (ruah) and eventually (and yet to be resolved) between resurrection of the dead (Apostle's Creed ) and resurrection of the body (Nicene Creed).

The Church wished to be universal but often confused its salvific mission (its true claim to universality) with the trappings of a limited cultural situation. Pretensions to be univocally universal in the sense of the same prayers, liturgy, instruction, etc., regardless of the diversity of her people, was the effect of viewing the Church through abstract vision instead of concrete seeing. The canonization of doctrines very nearly amounted to a canonization of the language and its Greek philosophical model through which the doctrine was haltingly expressed.

Words such as substance, transubstantiation, aceidental change, body and soul, although the best available in the technical language of the times, hold no scientific currency today and not much philosophical significance either. If in the past millenium our insights into doctrines have deepened, been modified or otherwise changed, allowance for such change should be made. Unfortunately, we find that such allowances are vigorously opposed by the hierarchy which prefers to stay with the older modes of expression-modes which often lisp and and say nothing or embarrass us by saying too much.

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Now change is a sign of life. (The late Maurice Chevallier recognized this. When asked if he minded getting older, his ready reply was, "Not when I consider the alternative.")

Everything in our expe1¡ience changes. It is only the abstract that is free of flux-and of life. We are the same, yet always different. Cells change, we grow, we change ideas and life styles. As parents, our relationships to our offspring are always changing. We must relate differently to the infant, the child in puberty, in adolescence, the young married and those established with their own families. These changing relationship are a sign of maturity. Parents who don't welcome these and who insist relations be fixated reveal their own immaturity. It is no tautology but a worthwhile insight to see that relations are relative. They must be so to cope with all the pervading reality of change. (An object lesson is the Japanese soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, who hid out on Guam for 28 years after World War II. Isolated from the mainstream of civilization, he now finds himself bewildered and unable to adjust to society.)

MEANINGFUL SURVIVAL

The same demand for adjustment to a changing world is evident in the life of institutions. Those that have survived in a meaningful way have done so only in considerably altered form. England's monarchy is a classic example. The awesome and crushing power of a Henry VIII has been dissipated and filtered down to the people. Only the symbol remains and that by the permission of the people.

The view that change of itself is wrong and that the institutional Church must remain rigid, stems again from an abstract conception of the Church. It is a notion fundamentally at odds with the Pauline view of the Church as Christ's living mystical body. What is abstract cannot change because it is either dead or lifeless to begin with. Thus we say of a dead man, "Now he belongs to the ages." (I might add that the same tendency can be found in keeping God at an abstract level. He is a God of salvation, who here and now 1¡eveals himself to his people.)

Historically, the Church did change with the times up to the Middle Ages. But there, the hierarchy found a comfortable

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dwelling place in the houses of kings, forgetting the Pilgrim character of the Church. Many of the cultural accretions of those times-titles, robes, rings, etc.-shucked off since by civil society, still cling to the hierarchy like barnacles to a sinking ship. The Papacy continues to bask in the title of the Caesars, Pontijcx Maximm. Paul's "Credo of the People of God" was a sign that political absolutism is not yet dead. The anachronisms of many prayers still make us uneasy in calling Christ our brother. Titles such as Christ the King, sound foreign not only to our culture but to New Testament literature as well. Christ ran away from attempts by the Jews to make him king. And a moment's reflection reveals the full irony of the inscription on the cross made at Pilate's behest, INRI. The stilted language of our formal prayers makes us look and act as court fools and flatterers to a medieval Master. It is interesting to observe that in times steeped in royalty, the dignity of all persons was realized again only at the abstract level; else Inquisitions could never have been tolerated.

THE CHANGING CHURCH

But change is inevitable and one can find it in the Church today. Such changes often sting and irritate many, but they do bear witness to vitality. To one who believes in the Spirit, worry ove1¡ change is nothing short of heresy. Some changes, of course, are trivial, others serious; some, the result of differing cultural situations, others the result of greater knowledge and understanding. Inconsequential are those that run the gamut from novenas, rosaries and litanies being out, to a relaxation of strictures against fasting, abstinence and optional religious garb. More serious are problems connected with birth control, abortion and divorce. Still more serious are the implications of the reinvestigation of doctrines and Biblical stories which are midrash. For example, if Adam and Eve never existed (and Biblical theologians find general agreement on this) the notion of original sin must be rethought as must Limbo and other items that we catch flying from Pandora's box.

Now the foremost change of our time is the emphasis everywhere on the dignity of the person. In general and in many specifics, Vatican II echoed agreement. With this new consciousness arose a new stress on rights over obligations, free-

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dom over knowledge, action over speculation, the good of the person over that of vested interests and a desire to participate more fully in the activities of the Church as befits both the ordained priesthood and the priesthood of the laity.

Yet difficulties are encountered. The teaching Church, like England's King John of old, has been reluctant to extend a Magna Carta to her people. Accordingly, she has neglected training them for their rightful responsibilities. In this she is as guilty of immaturity and arrogance as the parent who keeps his offering at the same level of dependence throughout life. This is inexcusable because the most fundamental meaning of authority, whether in civil or ecclesiastical society, is that of helping to author one another. What is clearly needed is faith, faith in God and faith in God's people. It is a sorry commentary that civil leaders have often shown greater faith in citizens than the hierarchy in the people of God! What Christianity preached was the freedom of the people of God. Unfortunately, many within the Church abetted the hierarchy in their holding action on the people, because they themselves did not wish freedom. In Sartrean terms, they wanted to be free of their freedom. This in turn posed an intolerable moral and psychological burden on the parish priest who mistakenly accepted the role of decision maker for them, robbing them of their rightful obligation toward growth, maturity and metanoia. ("Metanoia" is being used in its original sense of "conversion," "turning around," having second thoughts," and not in the "political" mistranslation by Church officials as penitence for disciplinary purposes.)

But a new era is dawning as will always be the case for the Church who is herself emerging from the cocoon of adolescence into youthful adulthood. Although her citizens have been conditioned so long by a variety of subtle influences, the new consciousness has brought with it a new sensitivity. For example, addressing the priest as "Father," bespeaks paternalism; not permitting a layman to place the host in his own mouth but requiring only the priest to do so, reminds one of spoon-feeding and more paternalism. Now some will say that laymen are becoming hyper-sensitive. In truth, they are more nearly often not sensitive enough.

This new consciousness, this "greening of Catholicism" into

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a more mature Christianity will continue to change the Church so that like her members, she will be the same yet different.

Because the Church has the Gospel, but also because the Church is in the contingent world, wherever she is there will be sameness and difference, progress and pitfalls. In more contemporary terms, where the Church is there will always be the Good News, but some accompanying bad news as well. But that is what it is to be the authentic Church, the Pilgrim Church, the People of God. Is this the same Church, then? Yes ...and ... no!

Paul J. ¡Weber

Daniel Berrigan: Political Theology in the Post- War Years A great deal has been tm¡itten about Berrigan's anti-war activities, little about his concern that Americans understand themselves and act accordingly.

There are many things about Daniel Berrigan, the poetprophet of the U.S. Catholic resistance movement that made him a most appealing figure in the antiwar movement of recent memory. He was very photogenic; he had a sense of the dramatic, the poetic, the mystic and the heroic. He was a man who, although or perhaps because he had suffered much, created a sense of warmth, gentleness and compassion when he walked into a room. In the wake of his own imprisonment and the Harrisburg trial of his brother, Daniel Berrigan seemed to become a martyr-like Christ figure among the Catholic Left, to be honored but not imitated.

Now that the Vietnam war is over an even graver danger is that Berrigan will be lionized, categorized and forgotten as a pop saint, a sincere if simple activist who did his heroic thing at the right time. Berrigan is more than that. He is a serious thinker who has a significant political and theological message 77

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to communicate far beyond the phase-out of the Vietnamese war.¡ To attempt to organize his writings into something one might call "political theology" is in one sense a distortion. But in another sense it is a necessary undertaking if the man's work is not to be forgotten. It is a distortion because Berrigan himself has resisted attempts to make him "respectable," theoretically consistent or an abstract revolutionary. He rather challenges Jlâ&#x201A;Ź()ple to make their own commitments as a way of responding to his.

On the other hand, Berrigan must be taken seriously if his influence is to continue during the rebuilding of an American esprit. It is the purpose of this article to examine the writings of Berrigan and to present an outline of his methodology, his major concerns and several original contributions he has made to the theory of political resistance, all of which may provide some insight into what America must now be about.

METHODOLOGY

To use the word "methodology" for Daniel Berrigan's mode of procedure is to tease the meaning of words-but not entirely. He does not advance an argument analytically or systematically from basic concepts or hypotheses but intuitively from concrete incidents, people and books. The Berrigan method is a continuous dialetic between himself and his environment. He is far beyond most men an "open system" thinker. That is, an astonishing amount and variety of input material is processed through his own personality (a process that changes both the input and the processor) and comes out in a striking, challenging vision of the reality that is twentieth century America.

The most colorful example of this process is part II of No Bars to Manhood., in which the chapter titles are, respectively, (1) Jeremiah: the Worst is not Yet; (2) Paul in Chains; (3) Bonhoeffer: God is Neither Here nor There: ( 4) Gandhi: This Man is Disarmed and Dangerous; ( 5) A Camus Glossary; (6) This Man is Armed: The Cleaver of Eldridge. In each case some insight into the man who is the subject of the chapter-usually a quite obvious insight--serves as a launching dock for exploration into the heartland of contemporary American culture.

Possessed of such a methodology Berrigan cannot be called

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a "scientist" in any academic sense of that world. His writing is, however, aimed at the discovery of knowledge, of reality, of that which does exist. He is not pursuing some noble but ideal world; nor is he merely motivating men to fight for what ought to exist. He is not in the tradition of the pious writers or the mystic poets. Father Berrigan is a man in hot pursuit of the truth. His vision of what is, is drawn from what is, but not as seen through the filter of a preconceived analytical scheme of academia. Nor is it seen through the filter of defense department film clips or presidential newsreleases. It is seen through the filter of his own experience and his own reflections on the experiences of other, often marginal people.

The resulting intuitions are often expt¡essed in tenns of metaphors, analogies, wot¡ds twisted, taken apart and reversed in order to shoot new energy into them. The purpose and value of such an unorthodox methodology is that it forces the reader to see his world over the top of the culture-colored glasses he customarily wears. Needless to say it is necessary for coiJtemporary Americans to realize that all truth is not found through Gallup polls nor expressed in chi squares, nor even, when speaking of the Vietnam war, in terms of body count. It is also necessary, from the Berrigan viewpoint, to understand that a truth which cannot be reduced to statistical tables is not, for that unfortunate fact, less true, nor even less verifiable. Truth is verifiable scientifically if others can retrace the steps of the original pathfinder, test their firmness, and come to the same conclusions. So far few have dared to follow.

This intuitive-reflective methodology of Berrigan has Jed occasionally to profound insights and just as often to cute but trivial ones. Such mixed results are not unknown even within more tt¡aditional scientific methodologies. His approach suffers from many of the same weaknesses of the differences; similarities technique familiar to political sociologists, i.e., a Jack of control and predictability. These weaknesses need not be fatal. The point is that there is a method in the Berrigan madness, and that it is a valid method for getting an accurate fix on the place of America in the world.

UNDERSTANDING AMERICA

That fix or understanding of the United States' role in world

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affairs has proved to be an extraordinarily difficult truth to teach. Americans tend to see themselves as a highly moral, highly motivated people fighting for freedom and justice. And they see their government as embodying and forwarding-granted a few regrettable lapses-these values. Therefore any truth that contradicts that value structure is a shattering revelation most of us find almost impossible to deal with.

The one contemporary experience which has provided the daily pounding necessary to drive home the truth has been the Vietnam war. It was his concern with this experience that brought Daniel Berrigan into the public limelight. (He was, after all, an English teacher in a Jesuit high school for several years after his ordination.) The Vietnam experience also led to the common misconception that Berrigan is an antiwar protester pure and simple. His protest and his political thought have a significance far beyond the end of that tragic war. The first key to unlocking Berrigan's political thought is to realize that he is not primarily a protester but a teacher trying to get America to understand itself.

The real tragedy of the war as seen by Father Berrigan is not that it was a temporary moral wrong turn off America's expressway to freedom, or that it was the calculating confidence game of a small clique of powerful military-industrialists put over on an unsuspecting American public, nor even that it was an enormously mistaken foreign policy decision. The difficulty and tragedy is precisely that the war was an expression of the whole American ethos; that it was a normal, expectable result of normal, unexamined daily American life.

For Berrigan the war was simply an expression of a stated American mind-set in which power, competition, violence, death and protective-reaction strikes are the normal categories of understanding and action. He has often called it "the American way of death." Speaking of the dramatic conversion of the Catonsville protesters, he wrote, in No Bars to Manhood: "But suddenly for all of us, the American scene was no longer a good scene. It was, in fact, an immoral scene, corrupted by a useless and wasting war abroad, and a growing, petrifying racism at home. Ours was a scene that moral men could not continue to approve if they were to deserve the name of men. The American scene, in its crucial relationships-the

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law, the state, the Church, other societies and our own families -was placed in moral question. . . . Indeed, the change we underwent was so devastating that one misses the point entirely if he sees the Catonsville act as merely a protest against this or that aspect of American life. Catonsville, rightly understood was a profound 'NO' aimed not merely at a federal law that protects human hunting licenses. Our act was aimed, as our statement tries to make clear, at every major presumption underlying American life today."

The American evil was not, therefore, a limited, tangible, measureable structure called "the Vietnam war," and now ended. It is a pervasive, all but overwhelming cultural flood that threatens to drown not only the United States but, in this nuclear age, the world as well. The first step in controlling this flood is to make people aware of the danger. The first key ¡ to understanding Daniel Berrigan is his attempt to force Americans to see the reality of who they are and what they, through their major institutions, are doing to themselves and especially to the underdeveloped people of the world.

The evil is so pervasive that it is hard to recognize. Furthermore, as a cultural rather a structural, i.e., legal or governmental, problem the Vietnam war expressed an evil that could not be confronted directly, simply or in isolation. Nor, even in the war issue, was there any one person who was the cause of the evil and against who an effective campaign could be launched. The closest one could come was the President, his advisers and the Joint Chiefs of Staff who epitomize American leadership, and perhaps certain physical structures that kept the war system running on a practical, day to day basis, structures such as the selective service system and Dow chemical corporation.

The former, however, were too remote, too revered and too powerful to be confronted effectively with simple, direct acts of civil disobedience engineered by a small group of antiwar demonstrators. Nor were these individuals alone responsible for the United States' military posture; while they led the American people they were not terribly far removed from the attitudes of the majority of the people. To further complicate the issue, by the mid-sixties most Americans from the President to the man in the street decried the war as evil and pro-

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fessed to be against it. "Men differ only on how to end it," was the explanation.

The problem the antiwar protesters face in attacking such establishments as selective service systems was that they are too huge, too diversified and too wealthy to be effectively challenged. In addition, on the local level they are staffed primarily by what have been called "little groups of neighbors," petty bureaucrats and middle aged secretaries who tend to ellicit sympathy when harried by the protesters.

As a result of these difficulties Daniel Berrigan has had the audacity to proclaim that the only effective tactic will be the conversion of the whole nation. "The real question of the times is not the conversion of cardinals or persidents, but the convet¡sion of each of us." What is needed is not a change of laws but a massive change of hearts. The end of the war has not lessened that need!

The great Berrigan passion, therefore, is to communicate this truth of a society pervaded by evil and in need of repentence and conversion. It is, consistent with his own Christian background, a hope-filled communication. Americans are not beyond redemption; they can change their ways: "We have tried to underscore with our tears, and if necessary with our blood, the hope that change is still possible, that Americans may still be human, that death may not be inevitable, that a unified and compassionate society may still be possible. On that hope we rest our case."

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

It is only within this context of the search for truth and the hope for mass conversion-through-communication that Berrigan's lasting contributions to the political theory of resistance can be understood. His views are much less organized and self-conscious than were, for example, Martin Luther King's.

He has designedly not developed a "theory" of Civil disobedience. In his one writing specifically on the topic, a chapter entitled, "Conscience, the Law and Civil Disobedience," he warns his readers, "Let us grant from the beginning the serious nature of this subject. Indeed it. is so serious that on its behalf many good men are driven against a wall-to death by violence, to prison in resistance to violence. Their blood¡ and

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tears forbid us the luxury of an abstract debate."

Even granting this refusal to debate in the abstract, WEâ&#x20AC;˘ can see in Berrigan's writings a three-fold impact on the theory of civil disobedience. The first is a shift from civil disobedience as a technique for confronting concrete, limited injustices to a technique for communicating a general vision of an evil s<rciety. In practice this has led to symbolic civil disobedience, a type exemplified in the draft board raids.

Daniel Berrigan was not the sole creator of symbolic civil disobedience; it was the brainchild of many resistance people.

It was Berrigan, however, who became its most effective prac. titioner and its greatest publicist. It has become an intrinsic part of his political thought.

Symbolic civil disobedience breaks from its classical roots in several ways. First, the law broken may very well not itself be immoral, but it may take on an "aura of immorality" simply because it is part of a larger immoral scene. For example, the law against the destruction of government property is a perfectly moral law. But as applied to draft records it was part of a larger evil, the prosecution of an immoral war, and therefore the group was justified in breaking the law in this instance although not in all instances.

Secondly, the objects and occasions for acts of symbolic civil disobedience are chosen primarily for their visual impact, particularly on ordinat-y people through effective use of the news media. The value of the act is determined more by the public image it projects-its ability to educate and convertthan by the injustice of the law it breaks or even its possible concrete effectiveness. No one, least of all Daniel Berrigan, expected to shut down the draft system by the raid on Catonsville. What is involved in symbolic civil disobedience is primarily what Francine du Plessix Gray called in Divine Disobedience "the desperate search for symbols" that will force people to look at the realities of American life.

In short, under Berrigan's influence and that of his brother, civil disobedience has moved from civil action to civic drama.

The publicity is sought not in order to draw attention to. this or that unjust law but to the whole way of life; it is an attempt to shock people into asking ultimate value questions.

Berrigan cried out at one point, "But how shall we educate men

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to goodness, to a sense of one another, to a love of the truth?

And more urgently, how shall we do this in a bad time?" With the new emphasis on symbolism the civil disobedient is not just a breaker of unjust laws; he is a teacher of the people.

The second major impact of Daniel Berrigan on the theory of civil disobedience is the concept of political jeopardy. In classical civil disobedience it is axiomatic that one who breaks the law accepts the punishment as a sign of his good will. The initial impulse of the men and women after the Catonsville . draft record destruction was to use the trial as a teaching forum, then to serve their jail sentences. While out on bail Berrigan made the decision, along with his brother, that more would be accomplished by fleeing underground and living the life of a dispossessed, hunted fugitive for moral reasons. It means living without safety, comfort, security, living without a home, an income, steady friends, a professional status, or indeed, even without a good name. In a letter he wrote to his fellow Jesuits explaining his actions, Father Berrigan stated of his brother and himself, "We are not criminals but we choose to be exiles in our own land."

The immediate reason for choosing to live this life of jeopardy was that the courts refused to allow discussion of the real issue of the Vietnam war's immorality or even of its unconstitutionality, concentrating exclusively on the destruction of government property-an offense freely admitted-and thus itself became a participant in the evil of the other branches of government. To submit to such a court without at least a symbolic protest, claimed Berrigan, would have been to participate in its immorality. Such a life is chosen not to escape punishment but to teach the community, to give an example, to bear witness, to be a voice crying in the wilderness.

In a sense, therefore, Berrigan has broken the direct link ¡Of "crime" and punishment so strongly forged in classical civil disobedience. Or rather, he has inserted a new link between them, a period of witness time in which the civil disobedient lives a life of political jeopardy.

Finally, Berrigan broke with classical¡ civil disobedience in that the latter have insisted that they are not revolutionaries, that they accept the basic values and framework of society and that they wish only to reform certain evils within that society.

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Publicity, nonviolence and accepting punishment have been signs of their sincerity. Berrigan, however, claims to reject American society in most of its major, underlying presumptions. He claims to be a revolutionary who looks for a new, radically different America. As he wrote in reflection of his own conversion : "Many of us-myself from European, African and LatinAmerican experiences-were sick unto death of death itself as a definition of the American way. We wanted to say, quite simply and clearly, at Catonsville, in the court, and in the prison that will undoubtedly follow, that something radically different is still possible, that we ourselves wished to offer a possibility of achieving that difference."

As previous and subsequent events have shown, he is willing to take concrete action that he hopes will begin to make that difference. Few will deny that Berrigan has made an enormous difference, one which, at least in the Catholic community, will have reverberations for at least a generation. But has Berrigan, by this revolutionary stance taken himself beyond the pale of civil disobedience? I would judge rather that he has added a new dimension to the theory, for it is the Berrigan assumption that if Americans are pushed to self-consciousness they will -revolutionize themselves willingly and without violence through the electoral process. Furthermore, the revolution he calls for is a turning from America's practiced values of war and racism in pursuit of a runaway materialism to its preached values of freedom and justice. The Berrigan revolutionary stance is not, then, one of despair with the system, but one of deep rooted hope. More than anything else it is a call for conversion. Now that the war has ended the need to heed that call is greater than ever.

THE CALL TO ACTION

The second key to understanding the political thought of Daniel Berrigan lies in his conception of action. It is not enough to understand America; one must act in a manner consistent with his understanding. This is not, as many have feared, a call to illegal action. It is rather a call to conscience.

Each man must act as he feels called to act within his life situation and with the talents and resources he has. But he must

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act. Berrigan would agree with Abraham Lincoln who stated that "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."

There is in this insistance upon action the realization that Christians must work as hard for peace as other men do at war. A recent editorial put the matter succinctly, "The war has inertia on its side. In a strange reversal of the usual order of things it requires inaction to fight the war and action to stop fighting it." Here lies a lesson for the post-war months.

Just as wars are not fought by men sitting around cafes having intellectual discussions or by men praying in Church, so neither will a just and creative peace be won by such tactics.

To achieve a just peace, one that involves a true reordering of national priorities, will demand as great an active heroism and personal sacrifice as does waging war. The great Christian mystery is that the Kingdom of God is won through suffering and not through warfare.

This "drive to action" has caused Berrigan some difficulties in that he appears to defend anyone who is active in resistance against the dominant American ethos-where it be Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers, a student who immolates himself in a war protest or the Weatherman faction of S.D.S. Yet, to follow just the Weatherman example, while Berrigan does admire them for their willingness to act, he strongly disagrees with their violent tactics. In his letter to the Weathermen he voices a desire to dialogue with them, to show them that violence cannot overcome violence, "and that a movement has historical meaning only insofar as it puts its gains to the side dictated by human dignity and the protection of life, even of the lives most unworthy of such respect. A revolution is interesting insofar as it avoids like the plague the plague it promises to heal."

In short, there must be action, but it must be a creative, purifying action. It is not enough to ape the immoral violence of the oppressors. At the same time action cannot be seen as only a defiant but hopelessly symbolic gesture. Symbols communicate ideas and facilitate understanding. In America only activity which is exciting, controversial or novel can capture national attention via television, and only if they pay attention

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will Americans begin to reflect on the evils of their society.

The first purpose of action is to bring understanding.

The second purpose of action is to bring about and concretize a true conversion. People must first understand the sins we commit as a nation, but then they must perform whatever actions are within their power to bring the American people back to human and Gospel values. This is not, as was mentioned, a call to illegal action. Much less is it a call to violent opposition to the government. Both Fathers Philip and Daniel BelTigan have committed illegal acts (and have accepted punishment for them), but they were of a special kind, i.e., they were aimed at the destruction of property which has no moral right to exist. The property they destroyed was an intrinsic, highly symbolic part of an evil war effort aimed at the destruction of human beings. The effort at Catonsville had as its goal to publically contrast the destruction of a few hundred pieces of paper to the death of over one million human beings in Vietnam. Even this action had as its purpose the education and conversion of Americans.

NONVIOLENCE

The action to which men are called must be nonviolent and creative of peace. In an excellent article (America, 8j19j72) Ernest Ranly distinguishes four kinds of people who practice a nonviolence that is often confused with the creative nonviolence Berrigan calls for : "There are, first of all, the socially and politically apathetic [who] just don't care ... A second group, the fearful and the cowardly, are nonviolent in their wish to avoid all dangerous and potentially dangerous situations ... A third type of falsely nonviolent are those people so oppressed, so victimized, so lacking in self-identity and pride that they make no effort to stand up for their rights ... Finally there is that class of nonviolent people described as nonresisters ... While they create their own little enclaves of peace, they have no visions of a new earth for mankind as a whole."

The type of nonviolent action which Daniel Berrigan advocates is preeisely not any of these. Rather, his conception of nonviolence follows that expressed by Paul Ricoeur in his essay,c:','Nonviolent man and His Presence in History.''.. It is a

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full awareness of the significance of man's living in history with a past he can neither deny nor erase, but only learn from.

This must be the significance of Vietnam for the future because it is a recognition that much of what is most human in man, his poetry, music, heroes, novels and dreams, are woven from the web of violence. Most of all it is a recognition that: "to be truly nonviolent a person must confront his own history of violence in order to influence the direction of that history.

One must enter actively into present history to alter effectively future history. Unless one's nonviolence has some effect upon man's social and political history it is a false nonviolence."

Loooking at the nonviolent action demanded by Berrigan in the light of Ricoeur gives meaning to the f01mer's use of the word "powerlessness." Berrigan is not powerless and apparently has no intention of becoming powerless. His charism, writing and followers assume him of a significant impact.

What he means by powerlessness is personal, institutional, military and political nonviolence. The only imposition on other people he will tolerate is the imposition of a witness which attempts to make both the vision and the seeds of a new heaven and a new earth grow for mankind.

Just what that new heaven and new earth will consist of is, of course, difficult to concretize. Beyond such ideas as "a nonviolent, loving people," "a world of just, compassionate men," etc., Berrigan states: "My point is a very simple one: that we as active and concerned individuals are historically valid and useful for the future only in proportion as our lives are testing some of the powerlessness which is the alternative to the wrong use of power today." Much of his insistance on nonviolence is based on a belief that in the concrete order ends grow out of means. If one cannot spell out in vivid detail what the end product of this "testing" will be, he can at least determine that the building blocks themselves are morally righteous; that what eventually is built may come as a surprise, but loving means will at least gurantee that the surprise will be a pelasant one.

THE MOVEMENT

Finally, action must be organized. Father Berrigan often, although not always objectively or consistently speaks of "The

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Movement." Precisely what he means by this term is difficult to discern. Some see it as a new, left wing political party, others as a group of revolutionaries. Berrigan himself seems to define the movement as those who see what he sees. The present writer feels compelled to see that movement simply as the new, hoped for Church, primarily because Berrigan talks of it in terms of a community in search of salvation. Here as elsewhere theology and politics intertwine in his thought. "Movement" can be seen as a substitution for "institution." It is "the restless search for God" as opposed to the assured presence of God; it is a constant pulling up of one's roots and moving on as a sinking of one's roots into a culture and becoming settled; it is the difference between a pilgrim people and an immigrant Church.

The movement is an amalgum of people organized not hierarchically according to set rules and canon laws but losely according to the demands of faith, mercy and justice. It is Jed not by popes and bishops (although it doesn't deny them a role) but by the Spirit and charasmatic leaders who arise on specific occasions for specific purposes. The closest Berrigan comes to defining the movement is in The Geography of Faith when he calls it: "[that] small and assailed and powerless group of people who are nonviolent in principle and who are willing to suffer for our beliefs in the hope of creating something very different for those who will follow us."

The purpose of the movement is to "make connections" between people, to bring together and support Jikeminded people, then to spread the Good News of the possibility of a new creation. At the same time the movement is not a break with or a repudiation of the official Catholic Church. It is in some ways an attempt to broaden the concept of Church and to convert the members of that Church, along with others, to powerlessness and nonviolence as a way to actively change the world.

The potential for profound change is here; what it will amount to depends on how the Berrigan ideas survive the post-war years.

,,

AND SO .â&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘

To summarize and conclude: a great deal has been written about Berrigan's antiwar activities, but little attention has

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been paid to his political thought which transcends the war issue. His methodology, while unorthodox, is a valid approach to truth and has been the source of numerous insights into American culture. In his writings Berrigan attempts two things: (1) to get Americans to understand themselves and their impact on the rest of the world, and (2) to get America to act in a manner consistent with their understanding. His theory and practice of civil disobedience must be understood within this context as a method for bringing about the conversion of peoples in a creative, nonviolent way. This need for conversion has not ended with the war but conversion has become possible and even more urgent.

Berrigan's call for organizing "a movement" is in some senses the least developed and potentially most powerful, explosive aspect of his thought. How effective it will be depends on how seriously we continue to take this man and his ideas.

Richard J. Woods, O.P.

1 he Possession Problem: or Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Exorcism but Were Afraid to Ask. The devil has been making a striking comeback in the religious consciousness of American Christians.

The parish priest may have his work cut out for him.

!,

\Vhen the New York Times magazine section featured an article on the devil by Fr. Andrew Greeley (Feb. 4, 1973), it was abundantly clear that the subject of Satan was again relevant. A month earlier, Dr. Martin Marty had observed in the Christian Century (Jan. 10) : "Yes, the devil is relevant as always: to explain what's wrong with the other guy, with your opponents, or with yourself, in case you don't want to take responsibility in the world."

Since 1966, when Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby and Anton Szandor LaVey's Church of Satan were sprung on "secular" citizens, the devil has been making a striking comeback in the religious consciousness of American Christians (and others).

The ovet"\vhelming success of William P. Blatty's obscenely 91

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pious horror novel, The Exorcist, testifies to the continuing fascination Satan exercizes on our contemporaries. The film version, made with the active cooperation of several Jesuit priests and Chicago's Fr. John Nicola, the reported gnru of U.S. demonologists, promise to reap even more from sowing demonic winds-especially cash benefits. It is not surprising that, according to Hollis Alpert (World, Feb. 14), Warner Brothers considers Pope Paul's recent statements about Satan and evil "a virtual endorsement of the film. 'Never underestimate the power of a publicity man,' said Howard Newman ... in charge of publicity for the picture, (who) regards the Pope's remark as a considerable coup for his department."

Well he might. Since the days of D. W. Griffith, Hollywood has known only too well how to squeeze every drop of cash value from exuberant ecclesiastical endorsements of spectacular films, a trick developed to a peak of refinement by Cecil B. deMille, whose main contribution to cinematic religion was technicolor prurience. Occasionally a fiasco like The Cardinal appears, which is merely embarrassing. But Warner Brothers has invested a lot in the success of The Exorcist-not only six million dollars, but the talents of William Friedkin, who directed The French Connection, and actors of the caliber of Lee J. Cobb and Max von Sydow. (It is not known who is playing the demon.)

The only trouble, of course, is that the Pope was not talking about The Exorcist, book or film; and it may be doubted whether the venerable Patriarch of the West would countenance a story about a little girl who masturbates with a crucifix.

Be that as it may, Mr. Alpert blithely announces that The Exorcist is being made "with full Catholic approval."

Such statements would be merely comical if the situation were not more serious from a pastoral viewpoint. The problem with The Exorcist is not that it is bad, but that it is convincing, at least to the unwary. No doubt Mr. Friedkin's notable talents as a realistic director will make the film more convincing than the book, even laced as it was with scholarly (if frequently twisted) references. Further, films in themselves tend to be more realistic than novels--a fact duly acknowledged in the transformation of the Index of Forbidden Books into the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures.

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A PASTORAL PROBLEM

As a student and teacher of media, a reviewer and sometime film-maker, I am not particularly adverse to film art nor in favor of censorship, especially prior restraint. I am, however, opposed to deliberate distortion of facts, whether for the sake of dramatic interest or salesmanship, a lit Warner Brothers.

The Exorcist case is particularly serious, not only for these moral lapses--classified best, perhaps, under "truth in advertising"-but because of the effect both the book and the film are having on a growing number of impressionable people.

The current hey-day of diabolism is reaping much more than money; it is harvesting, or at least catalyzing, a whirlwind of spiritual and psychological disorders of frequently tragic consequences. A truly pastoral problem is in the making, whether or not it amounts to a "crisis" situation in other than individual lives. It is, simply, the problem of personal evil experienced as demonic possession coupled with a desire, if not deIJialld, for exorcism. The difficulty is compounded by many factors, not least of which is the official attitude of benign neglect toward exorcism in the Roman Catholic Church and a general skepticism regarding the devil, possession and exorcism.

What I intend to explore in the following article is the growing incidence of possession cases imd exorcisms; their possible causes, both natural and supernatural; their consequences for mental and spiritual well-being; and, lastly the significance of the new emphasis on possession and exorcism for the Church's teaching and pastoral ministry. The perspective is that of pastoral theology and the philosophy of religion-not of film or literary criticism, although the peculiar nature of the recent possession-mania is that it thrives on the media, and so warrants some consideration of this factor. In particular, I am writing as a minister who has found himself with fourteen such cases referred to him in less than nine months, about half of them traceable to The Exorcist. Ministers and pastors as well as psychiatrists have informed me that in their own experience, the number of such cases is rising. As might be expected, so is that of amateur exorcisms. Given the 'success' of the book, we can expect that following the release of the filmed version of The Exorcist, there will be a jump in the number of alleged possessions unmatched since 1692. And a good many

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of the clergy, and possibly doctors and psychiatrists, are likely to be about as prepared for the event as were the good people of Salem. The Exorcist is not, of course, the cause of all this; it is itself a symptom of a spiritual agitation in Western society that began long before 1966. The possession problem is the manifestation of spiritual disintegration, not the least danger of which is the emergence of a secret cult of the devil in the midst of the Church itself.

POSSESSION, PSEUDO-POSSESSION, EXORCISM

Possession is undoubtedly the rarest of all spiritual phenomena in Western religions, although it has always been present in some form, as T. K. Oesterreich adequately demonstrated in 1921 (T.K. Oesterreich, Possession Demoniacal and Othe1¡, New Hyde Park, New York: University Books ed., 1966).

Demonic possession is but one variety of possession, perhaps the rarest of all. Indeed, some students-for instance Jean Lhermitte (True and Fa/Be Possession, New York: Hawthorn Books, 1963) -doubt that any genuine cases of demonic possession exists outside the New Testament accounts. Some scholars, such as Oesterreich, deny the reality of even the scriptural cases-not that they were possession states, but that a demon was responsible.

Recent experiences within the Christian fold seem to indicate, conversely, that possession, like miracles and charisms, may well be present and increasing. Consequently, it is not surprising that along with the growth of pentecostal groups, the charismatic renewal in the Catholic Church, the popular healing demonstrations of Kathryn Kuhlman and others, the increasing practice of lay exorcism, the publication of a new Anglican exorcism ritual two years after the rank of exorcist was dropped from Roman Catholic ordinations, the Pope's statements, the impact the The Exorcist, etc., that a general sense of supernatural bewilderment has developed. The confusion has hardly been diminished by sibling controversies among right-wing Christian sects, who are seriously divided over the issue of tongue-speaking and other charisms. That popular writers in the Jesus movement, such as Hal Lindsey, can doubt the validity of glossolalia but accept possession, exorcism, etc., seems to give the devil a little more than his due.

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In general, non-pentecostal fundamentalist Christians seem likewise content to accept biblical testimony regarding New Testament cases of tongues, miracles, possessions, etc., but nothing thereafter, despite the seeming identity of the phenomena. Modern cases of such paranormal events are simply attributed to the devil, since they cannot come from God. The Catholic tradition has regarded such manifestations with caution, refusing to grant them divine or diabolical status a prio1-i, nor without first ascertaining that they were not of natural origin; but it has generally adhered to the reality of postApostolic miracles. And although the demythologizing tendency of recent biblical criticism and the adoption of the scien. tific world view has given many Catholics a strong sense of skepticism regarding the supernatural, the almost simultaneous eruption of the cha1~smatic movement, complete with glossolalia, faith-healing, prophecies and poltergeists has re-introduced supernaturalism among adherents of the Old Faith.

POSSESSION AND PSEUDO-POSSESSION

What is evident in all of this is that a new sense of the supernatural, however confused, has emerged in the Christian community as a whole within recent years, much as Peter Berger has divined in A RurnoT of Angels. But interest in the supernatural obviously extends beyond the borders of the Christian fold, as the wave of occultism flows on and the oriental and mystical sects flourish. And in the wake of the crisis mentality of the recent past, tenderized by emergencies such as the war in Vietnam as well as controversies ranging from abortion to papal infallibility, the new supernaturalism understandably surfaces in sometimes bizarre and pathological episodes such as possession and (especially) pseudo-possesion.

In general, possession is experienced as an "invasion" of one's body by an alien, conscious personality which displaces the conscious personality (ego) of the victim. A state of complete or partial amnesia usually follows the phenomenon of possession. From a psychological viewpoint, this indicates that (in certain cases at least), there are not two real personal egos in conflict for control of one body, but that a fragmentation of the unified consciousness of one person has occurred.

Oesterreich was not sure enough of this theory to embrace it as

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an explanation, nor did he consider possession to be a form of hysteria, since the dissociation of consciousness was the only symptom hysteria and possession appeared to share in all cases.

Since 1921, however (a William Blatty seems unaware), studies of possession and trance states made with the aid of electroencephalographic and other instruments indicate that most possession cases are a variety of hysterical attacks or psychomotor epilepsy. It remains true, following Oesterreich, that as a species of what is now called "altered states of consciousness," possession states can be voluntary or involuntary, pathological or beneficial, dreaded or welcomed. A great many alleged possession states, however, are true schizophrenic reactions, a fragmentation of normal consciousness accompanied by amnesia and apparently, on occasion, paranormal phenomena. Such a state is theologically termed pseudo-possession, but need not imply deliberate fraud.

Regardless of whether the possession state is normal or abnormal, real or "pseudo," the possessed persons typically attribute their state to the presence of any one or several of a variety of spiritual beings-gods, such as the Vouduan Loa: ghosts, such as the spirits of the dead who allegedly speak through trance mediums; living persons and sometimes even animals ; and demons, including the devil himself, although this is a notion devoid of any scriptural basis whatever. God, too, is sometimes believed to possess persons. Even in Christianity, tongue-speaking or glossolalia is interpreted as the Holy Spirit praying through the believers (although Paul seems to indicate in I Cor. 13:1 that even angels may thus possess). True prophecy, as the Nicene Creed affirms, is the Holy Spirit speaking through the prophets. However, neither the Father nor Jesus possess the believing Christian-although, of course, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the¡ Son, as the Creed also professes. ¡ Most careful studies of possession as well as tongue-speaking (especially William J. Samarin, Tongues of Men and Angels, New York: Macmillan, 1972 and John P. Kildahl, The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues, New York: Harper and Row, 1 972) conclude that originally these are not supernatural phenomena, but varieties of psychological abilities. There are, nonetheless, sound theological and even anthropological reasons

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for refusing to categorize all possession states within the scope of natural abilities.

POSSESSION AND THE NEW TESTAMENT

Demonic possession and other forms of spirit possession, although totally absent from the Old Testament, were clearly acknowledged in Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia from the earliest times. By the New Testament period, and in other contemporary accounts such as Josephus' Antiquities, possession and exorcism were recorded almost matter-of-factly, although with some interest. In the New Testament, not only do Jesus and his disciples cast out demons, but other Jewish exorcists also do so, using Jesus' name as their authority (Mk. 9:38 and Acts 19 :13). Characteristic of Jesus' exorcisms is the simple brevity of his command to the demon to depart, in contrast to the lengthy conjurations and even fumigations of his pagan contemporaries. Significantly, Jesus is never called 'exorcist,' and the word 'to exorcise' (exorkidzein) is not used in this sense in the Bible. (References: Mt. 7:28-33, 17 :14-21; Mk. l :23-27, 3 :221f, 5:2-10, 9 :17-27, 12: 241f, 43ff; Lk. 8:26-39, 9:35-45, 13 :10-13; Jn. 9:44-45; Acts 19 :13-16.) It is also significant that Jesus' authority to cast out demons is specifically transmitted to his disciples (Mk. 6:7, 13; 16:17-18; Acts 5 :16, 18:7, 16:16-18, 19 :12).

In New Testament usage the devil, Satan, does not possess.

Only demons are exorcized, although they are apparently the agents of Satan (Mt. 12:26; Mk. 3 :23-26). and when they are cast out Satan is also defeated. The word used to designate the possessing spirits is not the Greek daimon, which appears only once in scripture (Mt. 8 :31), but daimonion, a term possibly indicating contempt. (In Greek usage, a daimon could be either good or evil; a daimonion, 'divinity' was a lesser being, apparently, which in New Testament usage was uniformly malicious.) The daimonia are indeed contemptible and hardly of the stature of fallen angels. They more nearly resemble the vicious and even stupid entities modern occultists call 'elementals.' They cause illness and suffering, both physical and mental, but they do not appear to tempt, the prerogative characteristic of Satan. Their principle function seems to be to afflict, and in this they are manifestly Satan's servants, who

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is the "father of lies and a murderer from the beginning" (Jn. 8 :44). A parallel situation can be found in certain psychotic disorders in which the victim claims to be controlled and tormented by "spirit voices" which often leads to severe depression, paranoia and suicidal tendencies. While it is groundless to affirm that all such people are possessed by unclean spirits.

I would not rule out the possibility that some are actually so afflicted. As Fr. Nicola has suggested, many inmates of mental institutions may be more in need of spiritual healing than psychotherapy. On the other hand, a good many people who demand the services of an exorcist are more likely to be in greater need of a psychiatrist.

Odd as it seems, then, we need not ascribe possession to the devil, nor in every case even to demons. It is not even absolutely necessary to believe in the devil (or for that matter, in God) to believe in demonic possession. (Incidentally, there is only one devil in scripture, Satan as he is most frequently called and sometimes Beelzebub, but neve1¡ Lucifer, a title that seems reserved for Christr-see 2 Petet¡ 1 :19 and Rev. 2 :28.)

Nevertheless, belief in the existence of the devil is certainly warranted by the New Testament, however that existence is conceived; Satan is mentioned by name in every book except the second and third Epistles of John. And although the devil is not mentioned in any of the creeds, the early Fathers as well as the Doctors of later centuries, were unanimous in recognizing his existence, and it was explicitly spelled out by three Church Councils-the Fourth Lateran Council, the Council of Trent, and the First Vatican Council. It is one thing to believe that the devil exists, however, and another to believe it according to the mind of the New Testament and the Church. Overbelief in the power of Satan or demons, or even accepting as Christian teaching the myths of the devil that sprang up over a thousand year period of Jewish and Christian speculation, is (as Aquinas realized) a covert kind of devil-worship, and from a psychological and spiritual viewpoint more destructive than skepticism.

Thus, even though the term "diabolical possession" is not scripturally accurate, it is theologically sound to recognize, as Christ did, the Satanic presence directing demonic seizures, even those we recognize as blse possession but are believed by

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their victims to be genuine. Obsessions with the idea of the devil are no less a Satanic attack insofar as they create spiritual and even mental disorders. Demonic possession, then, can include both true possession (\vhich is extremely rare if it actually exists) and other pathological disorders, that is, possession states that are destructive of health or sanity.

SIGNS OF POSSESSION

According to Oesterreich, the physical signs of possession are changes in the facial features, voice and character of the possessed person, accompanied by powerful motor movements.

The Roman Ritual specifies the psychological signs of knowing or speaking strange languages (glossolalia or xenoglossy) and knowing hidden or future events. Since the seventeenth century, however, theologians, following the Jesuit, Thyraiis, have held that not even these signs are decisive for determining genuine cases of demonic possession, since all of them can be ac~ counted for by other factors. Further, for the last seventy years, the advances in parapsychology have been recognized by the Church as weakening the force of the psychological indications even Thyraiis held to be indicative. Thus, the Church demands that the final judgment be made only with expert consultation (which today would necessarily include medical, psy.; chiatric and parapsychological tests) and after a careful consideration of the evidence as a whole. Importantly, the Ritual prescribes that a priest called to investigate a claim of possession "should not believe too readily that a person is possessed by an evil spirit; but he ought to ascertain the signs by which a person possessed can be distinguished from one who is suffering from melancholy or some other illness." Despite the seventeenth-century language, this caution has resulted from the Church's extensive experience with pseudo-possession. One of the earliest such caveats appeared in the Acts of the National Synod of Rheims in 1583, at a time the witchcraft mania was raging : "Before the priest undertakes an exorcism he ought diligently to inquire into the life of the posessed, into his condition, health, and other cirmurristances: and should talk them over with wise, prudent and instructed people, since the too" credulous are often deceived, and melancholies, lunatics, and persons bewitched often declare themselves to be possessed and

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tormented by the devil : and these people nevertheless are more in need of a doctor than an exorcist."

There are times, such as the early seventeenth century and as late as 1692 in America, when the belief in possession seems particularly epidemic, a situation most sociologists and psychologists locate in the stresses of the personal and social life of people caught up in an uncertain era. The resort to exorcism in such cases has proved not only to have been useless but damaging; since the causes are often other than spiritual, the symptoms soon reappear, if they abate at all, as was the case in Salem. When exorcism fails, the likelihood of despondency is enormous. Further, the dramatic nature of public exorcisms in particular adds fuel to the fires of social mania, such as those that racked Europe for over two centuries. Imprudent exorcisms increase rather than decrease the spiritual and mental damage of demonomania. Public exorcisms were forbidden for this reason by Cardinal Mazarin following the tragic events at Loudun in the mid-seventeenth century.

THE ROOTS OF POSSESSION

In our own times, when witchcraft-black, white and gray -has returned in force and even Satanism is rumored far and near, the four hundred-year-old warning of the Synod of Rheims is still appropriate; for occultism can easily lead a sensitive and suggestible person into bizarre beliefs, including that of their own possession, against all evidence to the contrary. But pseudo-possession fattens on much more than occultism; both ardent and lax Christians who abhor or shrink from the sigbt of a ouija board often find themselves plagued by the same obsession as do the unwary occultists-and, it seems to me, for the same reason: they are attributing to a mere game (or whatever) a power it simply does not have.

Such persons invest the object of their awe or fear with the energy of their own emotions, thus initiating the process of the self-fulfilling prophecy. The essence of idolatry is not the worship of idols, but attributing powers that properly belong to God (or even our own spirits) to demons or mere things, and then revering the object as if it truly had such power. Thus, even Christians who find in Satan the subject of persistent fears and target of their unceasing crusade, or who damn every

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occult foible as a tool of hell, are themselves falling prey to idolatry.

The ground is tilled for such aberrations by the failure to conside1¡ the symbols and even the real experience of evil in a truly Christian manner-that is, not taking them too seriously.

A morbid interest in the devil or occultism, whether pro or con, is an open invitation to obsession and even possession.

Most cases of pseudo-possession appear to result from the interiorization (introjection) of external conflict (public or private) which, because they cannot be ignored or simply accepted for what they are, become perceptible consciously as the presence of an evil spirit. A more serious and difficult situation arises when inner tension between a person's conscious self-image and his more or less unconscious awareness of guilt, fear, or desires leads to an externalization (projection) of the latter as an alien conscious form. This type of pseudo-possession, in which a person is actually haunted by his own inner demons, is far more insidious and destructive than the introjection of social stresses, for it represents a fragmentation of the personality, a rejection of that part of the self for which one refuses to admit responsibility. The resulting, persistent "temptation," obscene suggestions, threats and accusations emanating from the "evil spirits" thus created intensify to the degr~ that the "possessed" person continues to deny the real identity of his demons. It is, as Dr. Marty insisted, much easier psychologically to blame the hideous wreckage of our lives on some devil than to put the blame where it belongs, on us. Perhaps we are afraid to accept responsibility because we lack the sense of adequacy and achievement that constitutes authority. How can we be responsible for events--e.g., inflation, the Vietnam war, the energy crisis, etc.-over which we have no direct control? And thus, we are led to excuse ourselves, but at the cost of introducing more demons into the world.

Traditionally, the causes offered to explain genuine possession are no less numerous than those for pseudo-possession, although much less convincing. Despite the fact that the New Testament is reserved to the point of silence about the cause of demonic possession, subsequent theologians have suggested everything from eating unblessed food to being hexed by

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witches (Salem) or cursed by someone. (Curses, like hexes, are feared not for spiritual but for magical reasons; likewise, possession cases increase in proportion to the emphasis placed on magic in a society. Curses are believed to work almost ex opere operato, implying that the 'correct' words have a coercive effect even on God.) Some theologians, such as Msgr. L. Cristiani, maintain that possessions occur by God's will, for by them an incredulous world is taught to believe in His power, which is made manifest in the exorcism rite. Others seem to think that possessions result from the devil's envious hatred of men, especially saints, such as John Vianney, whom Satan will persecute (obsess) if he cannot possess them. Fundamentalists of all stripes, beginning perhaps with the incidents at Salem, find dabbling or delving in the occult a ready invitation to the devil to set up his house. (For further discussion, see Richard Woods, The Devil, Chicago: Thomas More Association, 1973.)

In shot-t, there are so many explanations for demonic possession that none of them can be considered any more convincing than the others. The pastoral problem is not determining causes, however, but providing remedies, whether for genuine possession (if such a thing exists) and also for pseudopossession (which certainly does exist). The latter does not call for a pseudo-exorcism, however, for reasons mentioned above, but rather for pastoral counselling and the ministry of healing. It was not without cause that the Church suspended priests who performed unauthorized exorcisms.

THE MINISTRY OF DELIVERANCE

Spiritual counselling is not a task to be undertaken lightly when the problem is as complex and profound as that of possession or pseudo-possession. So real is the feeling of possession, that the gruff or frivolous brush-off many perplexed 'demoniacs' receive from busy pastors can result in a true crisis of faith, in which the sufferer's undeniable experience and hope for understanding assistance oveiTide his trust in the judgment of a skeptical and unimpressed minister. Nor, on the other hand, is an immediate attempt at exorcism the answer, despite the increasing incidence of such attempts by clergy and laymen.

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What is called for in the case of the "introjected-conflict" pseud<>-possession is a patient process of Christian education.

By this, I mean an interpretation of the Christian attitude toward evil, particularly as based on Jesus' emphasis on nonresistance and deliberate acceptance of unmerited suffering.

This is not spiritual masochism, but a realistic approach to the inescapable fact of evil in our lives, which we cannot overcome by denying it, but only by facing it, day by day. Confession, the humble acknowledgment of failure and sinfulness, is not only the most effective way of coming to grips with our o\vn inner demons and outer conflicts, it is the necessary condition for appropriating God's forgiveness in order to be enabled to concentrate on the gracious, good and beautiful elements in every human person and in life itself. Thus, with pseudodemoniacs, their awareness of guilt, even if exaggerated, should not simply be dismissed, but rather surpassed by an emphasis, fh¡st, on God's loving forgiveness, and then on their need to cultivate an attitude of loving trust, hope and honesty together with an effective willingness to forgive others. The real and basic goodness of people and the natural world should be constantly aflhmed and demonstrated, to offset the pseudo-demoniac's hyper-sensitivity to the excesses of cruelty, lust, selfishness and greed that seem to be proliferating in contemporary society. A celebmtive attitude toward life, a sincere enjoyment of fun and festivity, will more effectively dispel the gloomy mists of psychological and spiritual depression and obsession than will all the compulsory prayers of a lifetime.

The second variety of pseudo-possession described above presents far more difficult problems for effective spiritual counselling and possibly (though not necessarily) psychotherapy.

For when the roots of the disorder are bmied in the repressed depths of the spirit, the threat of true schizophrenia is grave. ln his valuable study, Occult Phcnmnena in the Light of Theology (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1957), ¡Fr. A lois Wiesinger cites many cases of unconscious spiritual or psychic conflict resulting in a total disintegration. Conversely, it is common occurrence for schizophrenics to hear accusing or threatening voices; the belief that an evil spirit is in possession of one's mind is thus practically indistinguishable from the paranoid delusions of true insanity. A spiritually naive

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psychiatrist will probably interpret all such symptoms identically. Nevertheless, psychiatry may represent the only immediate help for a severe "projected-conflict" pseudo-possession because of the complexity and depth of this kind of spiritual crisis. In a very real sense, psychotherapy is a type of exorcism. Often, however, because of the stigma attached to psychoanalysis and the cost, people who can benefit from the attention of a psychiatrist are reluctant to seek his aid, even if he is a Catholic. In such cases, the pastoral counsellor,¡ if possible in consultation with a psychiatrist, may be able to assist the pseudo-demoniac gradually to confront his inner demons-the fears, anxieties, frustrations and desires which have assumed a kind of independent reality. It is useless to deny the existence of these 'demons,' at least initially, but it is possible to ignore them to some extent. A refusal to give them any unnecessary attention but to address the underlying spir" itual problems can gradually starve the 'evil spirits,' depriving them of the emotional energy on which they subsist. Pathological psychological problems should, however, be referred to a competent therapist.

"SPIRITUAL HEALING"

Spiritual healing, especially in community prayer-service in which the participants pray over and for the afflicted person, may be an effective 'therapy' for the pseudo-demoniac, and if such a group can be found, a real deliverance can likely be secured in simpler cases. But despite the power of faith and prayer, the same caution must be taken with such meetings as with public exorcisms. Unbalanced individuals often thrive on attention, and can even feign signs of possession, consciously or not--a situation which has occurred many times in the history of the Church. On the other hand, suggestible members of the group may also succumb to the forceful influence of the obsession. Because it is a kind of hysteria, pseudo-possession can be highly contagious. Consequently, a prayer-group should be carefully instructed before attempting a spiritual healing for a supposedly possessed person.

Spiritual healing is effective according to the measure of faith of the healers and the healed, as Jesus plainly taught.

Consequently, an increasing incidence of spiritual disorders,

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such as the two types of pseudo-possession mentioned above presents a clear challenge to the whole Church to grow in faith.

The experience of evil is not primarily an individual event in the Christian life, but a social reality, and the means of redressing evil are likewise social. The individual is never alone, but one of the most overwhelming temptations suggested to obsessed persons by their "voices" is that no one can help them. The solidarity of the members of the Christian community should be openly manifest in such cases, and expressed in both direct and indirect ways. Paul has directed us to bear one another's burdens; the individual under spiritual attack, whether from his own or possibly very real demons should never be allowed to feel separate from the love of God made visible in the living community of believers.

Regarding true demonic seizure, a sincere grasp of the meaning of the Christian scriptures and historical experience cannot preclude the possibility of possession, no matter how unlikely. The recent report of the ecumenical commission convened by the Bishop of Exeter and its proposed exorcism ritual indicate that the real possibility of such psychic attacks are still being taken seriously (Exorcism, ed. by Dom Robert Petitpierre, O.S.B., London: SPCK, 1972). But like the old Roman Ritual exorcism, the Anglican rite carries the instruction that in a case of suspected possession, an experienced minister be summoned to investigate. Amateur exorcisms are extraordinarily foolish and capable of causing immense spiritual harm and mental injury. Moreover, the Christian struggle against the Principalities and Powers that continue to boss this world of darkness is not a matter of theatrical heroics such as Blatty celebrates in The Exorcist. The combat is waged by the Church of Christ; it is a common effort, not a hand-to: hand conflict of individuals. Individualism in the spiritual life is a Christian contradiction-and perhaps the greatest expression of such individualism is the egocentric entrapment of the possession mania. The wages of such individualism is spiritual death-psychological isolation in this life and eternal alienation in the next: hell is utter loneliness, the antithesis of the communal solidarity of love Christians call heaven.

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THE MYSTERY OF EVIL

In The Ex01¡cist, the terrible struggle against the "demon" results in no particular triumph for the Christian community.

Two priests die and the victim's mother finds herself able to believe in the reality of the devil, but not of God. Unwittingly, I think, Blatty has here pointed out that where faith is lacking, exorcism need not increase it and, as well, the grip of Satan on the mind may actually be strengthened. So overwhelming seems the power of the demon, that even the Church's ministers appear helpless to overcome it, and God does not seem much interested in the whole affair. Thus, even The Exorcist teaches us that too much emphasis placed on the reality of occult forces or clemons only serves to reinforce the fascination such ideas have on the credulous. Otherwise well-intentioned Christians who have become outspoken opponents of all forms of occultism and never tire of preaching the power of the devil in today's world are as much the victims of "occult bondage" as the people they castigate. The recent "anti-Satan" handbooks of Evangelists Hal Lindsey (Satan Is Alive and Well on Planet Earth) and Mike Warnke (The Satan-Seller), like Arthur Lyon's The Second Canting and The Exorcist, too, along with its imitators, constantly reinforce the very forces they profess to oppose. And that is idolatrous.

Seven hundred years ago, St. Thomas Aquinas observed in his Summa Theologiae that the sin of idolatry consists of giving worship to God in an undue manner, which he calls superstition (I-II, Q. 92, a.2). Idolatry also consists in giving the honor proper to God to creatures (ibid.). which, if such creatures are demons or the devil, is demonolatry. It is not beyond possibility that in overestimating the power and activity of the demonic in the world, Christians are actually giving credit where it is definitely not due. To attribute everything adverse to the devil is likewise superstitious. Yet that is a tempting possibility for people caught up in the throes of a disintegrating social system such as those of the tenth century, the fourteenth and during the great wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when hundreds of thousands of innocent victims went to the scaffold or the stake, having been accused and sometimes even believing themselves to be witches.

(Some were, but the vast majority of those executed were un-

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doubtedly innocent both in Europe and among the fifty persons hanged in the American Colonies at that time.) Likewise, cases of possession proliferated during these very times, and public exorcisms were common, until abuses warranted their supression. In this twilight of the second millenium, our own epoch is hardly superior to the past in terms of moral degradation, war and civil strife. \Ve should not be too surprised, then, that instances of possession and demands for exorcisms abound. But any sensitivity to the past mistakes of the Christian community should alert us' to the fatal trap of succumbing tc the devil-mania again. Nothing could be more pleasing to Satan than to see Christians neglecting their primary workthe creation of a Christian social order-to devote themselves to witch-hunts and public exorcisms.

From a pastoral perspective, counselling problems involving occult phenomena, including possession, are magnified by the likelihood that too much emphasis on the reality of power of occult forces or demons will reinforce the obsession which has led to the problem, whereas too great a de-emphasis will undercut the counselee's confidence in the ability of the counselor to grasp the situation. Traditional Christian approaches to the mystery of evil and spiritual affiiction, whether obsession or possession, indicate the possibility of maintaining a necessary and delicate balance between over-estimation and under-estimation of psychic forces and the careful employment of methods such as exot¡cism. The devil's cleverest wile is not to persuade us that he does not exist, but that he does not exist where he really is at work. The devil's chief area of interest has always been the world, the social sphere--institutions and corporations, governments, mass movements and factions. His choice weapons are war, disease, famine, hatred and ignorance.

Let us address ourselves to these, and we will not mistake the mystery of evil for the psychological manifestations of these situations in the life of individuals already made fearful by the seeming approach of Armageddon. What the world needs now is not the cultivation of fear nor even the politics of joy, but the witness of love and justice, truth and peace.

AUTHORS IN THIS ISSUE John F. Dedek is a professor of moral theology at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein, Illinois and associate editor of Chicago Studies.

Gerald F. Kreyche is the chairman of the Department of Philosophy at De Paul University, Chicago, Illinois.

John J. Shea teaches theology at Niles College of Loyola University; he is a doctoral candidate at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein, Illinois.

Thomas F. Sullivan is the Director of Religious Education for the Chicago Archdiocesan school board; he is the author of Focus on American Catechetics.

Thomas Sweetser, S.J., has a M.A. in sociology from the University of Minnesota; M.A. in Theology from Loyola University (Chicago); Th.D. (cand.) Chicago Theological Seminary. He is beginning a program of parish evaluation with the support of the N a tiona! Federation of Priests' Councils.

William G. Thompson, S.J ., is an assistant professor of New Testament in Bellarmine School of Theology of Loyola University Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of Matthew's Advice to a Divided Community.

Terence E. Tierney, from the Diocese of Paterson, N.J., is columnist for the diocesan newspaper "The Beacon." He has had articles published in The Priest, Pastoral Life and The Lamp.

Paul J. Weber, S.J., is a doctoral student in political science at the University of Chicago. Next fall he will be an assistant professor at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Richard J. Woods, O.P., Ph.D. (cand.) in philosophy of religion, Loyola University, Chicago; is the author of The Media Maze, The Occult Revolution, What a Modern Catholic Believes About the Devil and many others.

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