Richard Rohr: Unpacking Paradoxes

The Pope is Apparently not a Republican

Richard Rohr, OFM — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:44:03 +0000

“The world of finance, while necessary, no longer represents an instrument that favours our well-being or the life of mankind, instead it has become an oppressive power, that almost demands our adoration, mammon, the false divinity that truly dominates the world.”

Who said that? A socialist? A number of the Occupy Movement? An economic advisor to President Obama?
None of the above.
The words are those of Pope Benedict XVI, in an address given to the seminarians at Rome’s major seminary on February 15. And those words do not stand alone but are rather the latest in a series of strong statements over the last century by the Popes in support of social and economic justice, which is the right of every human being to lead a decent and humane life, and like Jesus to take the side of the poor instead of the powerful. This is unquestionable and obvious in the 4 Gospels.

It approaches dishonesty when Catholic Bishops, neo-conservative Catholics, and the ordinary press almost never quote the Popes when they say anything critical of capitalism or the Western economic system. Jesus said, “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” (Matthew 6:24). This is one of the few and the clearest dualistic statements that Jesus ever makes, yet many Christians today seem to have trodden the Gospel beneath the unquestionable god of “the market economy”, which seems to have rights and an absolute truth of its own. Corporations are now equivalent to persons in the USA, and the bishops have nothing to say about this, while creating pseudo problems over the issue of contraception. It defies honest analysis if you have been trained in Catholic systematic theology.

4 Senses of Scripture

Richard Rohr, OFM — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:55:11 +0000

During the first 1300 years of Christianity in the West, monasteries, scholars, and holy people rather commonly understood that there were at least four levels through which you would proceed, and thus apprehend or “read” a
Sacred text: 1) The literal, 2) The symbolic, 3) The moral (what might this call ME to DO?), and 4) The mystical (when the soul is stirred, and the head operates together with the heart).

This was the full spiritual reading of a text, and was sometimes called Lectio Divina or just “spiritual reading”.
Now most people stop at the first level, and remain there either argumentative, with naive identification, or totally disbelieving. This is probably predictable, because the heart and soul have not been touched and the ego still rules. The “fundamentalist” mind has thus taken over many churches, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, or Evangelical. The mind is the same in all of them, they just identify with different issues or words, arguing and dividing over them. Most atheists are fundamentalists too! It makes one feel right, superior, separate, and saved!
Yet we have actually gone backwards in our interpretation of Scripture and sacred texts. Who will return us to wisdom? Who will teach us how to let head, heart, soul, and body operate as one? (Luke 10:27) That is surely the goal.

Conservative versus Liberal Morality

Richard Rohr, OFM — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:55:36 +0000

Jonathan Haidt says that the question “What is moral?” is guided by one’s attitudes in six categories: 1) care for others, 2) a sense of fairness, 3) the value of freedom versus oppression, 4) loyalty to values and people, 5) respect for basic authority and tradition, 6) and a sense of the Sacred versus “nothing is really sacred unless I decide it is”.
He says that those who call themselves liberal or progressive tend to be nominally strong on the first (care for others), and also a bit on the second and third (fairness and freedom), but rather dismissive of the last three categories.
Those who call themselves conservatives at least pay lip service to all six categories, although all at a much lower level than the high of the liberal value of “caring for others”. HIs conclusion is that, for all of their biases, conservatives do present a more honest valuation of full human nature, and that is why they can more easily create strong “groups”. I think he is largely right. But Haidt also sees that conservatives can not usually recognize their over-identification with that very group and their own denied self interest in maintaining the status quo. Comfortable people tend to be politically conservative (conservare = “to preserve” in Latin).
How can we find the best of both groups? Human caring and a love of true freedom–that is also loyal and with a sense of the Sacred. Liberals deny the traditional values of the “first half of life” and falsely dive into the values of the “second half of life” in an often half hearted way (Ungrounded Enlightenment). Conservatives tend to do many “first half of life” values very well, but then sacralize them as if they are the whole journey and remain stuck right there (Naive Purity). There has to be a way to bring these two worldviews together. I see it most commonly in very humble people, especially if they have suffered hardships. They have their feet on the ground, but are searching for better ways to do almost everything.

Is God a Person?

Richard Rohr, OFM — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:53:19 +0000

To get a proper divine conversation started and going, we all have to think of God as a “person” somehow. Otherwise there is no reciprocity, mutuality, give and take, no ONE to love, no “I and Thou”. Humans only know how to relate to other persons initially. But if you stay there too long, you pay a big price, because God ends up being on the other end of YOUR conversation, which keeps God SEPARATE and somehow in need of daily “appeasement”. True intimacy is pretty hard to experience at this level, at least for long. The whole point of prayer is to lead you to experience and say what Jesus finally says “I and the Father are one!” (John 10:30). Then you do not pray to God as much as you pray THROUGH and WITH God. (Note how the official liturgical prayers end “THROUGH Christ our Lord. Amen.”) Eventuallly you must stop looking AT reality, and you will learn to look OUT FROM reality! This a a major and heart stopping change, and admittedly most people never go to this mystical level–because they were not taught very well, frankly. It is not because they are not worthy or incapable, but they usually feel unworthy and feel incapable. They are not.
When prayer naturally matures, God is not so much “A Person” out there, that I must cajole, adore, and obey, but God has become the VERY GROUND OF ALL BEING, which is in dialogue with you, loving you, receiving your praise, calling you forth, forgiving you, and revealing a gracious divine will in all things as they are. Prayer is now all the time and everywhere, as long as you are conscious and awake!
At this point it is still OK to think and talk of God as a person–as long as you know it is not really true–in the way you ordinarily use that phrase! God is no longer a mere person, but ALL of reality itself has become PERSONAL, relational, dialogical, giving and receiving, loving and lovable. God cannot be localized here or there any more (Luke 17:20), but as the old catechism said “God is everywhere”. This is a major and important maturing in one’s relationship with God, yet so few spiritual guides know how to lead us across when we think we are losing our initial faith. You indeed are! But you are finding a much deeper faith, and you must go through this necessary trial and darkness to grow up spiritually and experience true and full intimacy with God (Read St. John of the Cross, if you doubt me.)
For Christians, the paradox is resolved in the Trinity. They can continue to relate to Jesus PERSONALLY, but when their prayer becomes fully Trinitarian, as we see in the Christian mystics, God is not just A person that they have a relationship with, but God is RELATIONSHIP ITSELF (internally in God) and draws everything into that ONE DIVINE DANCE (externally in the universe). More and more people, I am finding, are ready for such adult Christianity and such mature spirituality (See Hebrews 5:12-13). Only then does “everything belong”, and only then do we get off the childish teeter-totter and fall onto a solid ground of joy. But it will surely feel like falling! Don’t be afraid.

Another true poem

Richard Rohr, OFM — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:14:47 +0000

“I have a feeling that my boat,
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing. . .
–nothing happens?
Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?”
“Oceans” by Juan Ramon Jimenez

This strikes me as a very apt statement of the experience of the mystics of all religions. This is why they are capable of living with a high degree of darkness and not knowing, and also explains their unchangeable joy. Down in the depths they know they have struck against a “great thing”.
It holds them, quiets them, amazes them from some
deep place that they cannot themselves understand. All they know is that the gap between the seeker and “the sought after” has been overcome from the other side. The One can no longer be seen as two,
and that is, indeed, a very new kind of life. Nothing more needs to happen.
All striving is over–and joy is always right beneath the surface.

A true poem

Richard Rohr, OFM — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:22:06 +0000

“Wanderer, your footsteps are
the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path
that never will be trod again.
Wanderer, there is no road–
Only wakes upon the sea.”
–Antonio Machado

Until Death Do Us Unite

Richard Rohr, OFM — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:20:20 +0000

I received a lovely letter today from a Polish Franciscan nun. She sent me her thoughts on her 50th golden jubilee as a Sister, and wanted to thank me for my talks, and especially the book, Falling Upward. Apart from her dearness and humility (“Do not bother to respond, I just had to speak these words of gratitude”!), she ended with a most telling complimentary close, “Until death do us unite”.
This says so much about her spiritual maturity and greatness of soul! Usually we think true union is on the other side of death, and we think death is about parting, but for her it is all now, and the work of uniting all things is already our work in this world. “If now, also then!” If only all Christians and our leaders saw as clearly as Sr. Frances Smalkowski, CSFN! Eternity will surely reveal that it is only her kind of love and faith that is holding the church and world together at all, especially in these times when we argue and divide over trivia.

Prayer to Avoid Entitlement

Richard Rohr, OFM — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:36:56 +0000

The Jewish people have a beautiful prayer form, a kind of litany to which the response is always “Dayenu!” (“It would have been enough!”)
They list one by one the “mirabilia Dei”, the wonderful works of God for their people and themselves, and after each one, shout out DAYENU! As if to say, “How much is it going to take for us to know that God is with us?!” It builds satisfaction instead of feeding dissatisfaction.
Maybe we all should begin our days with a similar litany of satisfaction, abundance, and enoughness. God you have given me another day of totally gratuitous life: my health, my eyes, my ears, my mind, my taste, my family, my freedom, my education, clean water, more than enough food, a roof over my head, a warm bed and blanket, friends, sunshine, a beating heart, and your eternal love and guidance. To any one of these we must say, “And this is more than enough!”
If we begin our day with any notion of scarcity, not-enoughness, victimhood, or “I deserve”, I promise you the day will not be good–for you or for those around you. Nor will God be glorified.

Is there a good politics?

Richard Rohr, OFM — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:06:02 +0000

Alexander Solzhenitsny says, “I must say that among educated people, politics occupies far too great a proportion of their time. . .Questions of higher spirit cannot even be compared to the sort of blinking frivolity of politics. The ultimate problems of life and death show the colossal nature of this difference even more…People are prepared to stuff their heads with anything, and to talk on any subject, while actually blocking off any true contemplation of the [whole] issue. This is the reason for the increased pettiness of our society, and our concentration on the small and the irrelevant.”

Although I largely agree with him, there must be a good meaning to politics too. Power must also be used to speak some truths and to protect the voiceless, and it sometimes does. Yet we know that huge money, low level sound bites to create alppearances for low level consciousness, human ego and vanity, and the endless need to get re-elected seems to compromise everything today. Maybe it always has. I can see why Jesus largely ignored the whole system in his lifetime, and just lived and taught at a higher level where truth and reality were possible.

Primacy of Conscience

Richard Rohr, OFM — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:26:14 +0000

“Despite a certain trend towards conservatism in parts of the church and society, I am convinced that we have moved into a new era that will be determined by people who live by their own conscience and are particularly qualified to act as discerning members of community and society…the era in which almost everyone was content to be born and to live as a member of a certain church or ‘organized religion’ is over. The people who will shape the future of believers of all religions are those who have the courage to make their own choice, whatever pain may be involved, and to do so with personal responsibility.”
- Fr. Bernard Haring, German Redemptorist priest, who was my “textbook” in moral theology class in the 1960s.. He is often called 20th Century’s greatest Catholic moral theologian.

Although the first principle of Catholic morality is that “You must follow your conscience”, we usuallly immediately override it with the second principle, which is that “You must form your conscience (Through Scripture, tradition, and prayer), which I surely agree with. It balances individualism with community. But let’s never forger the FIRST principle is still first!