Books Same words, different ideas
CATHOLIC MEANS
UNIVERSAL By David Richo Crossroad Publishing, 190 pages,
$16.95 |
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By CLARENCE THOMSON
Perhaps only regular NCR readers will appreciate how
difficult it is to reconcile the religion of our youth and our institution with
the mystery of a living faith. Our faith is intermittently nourished and
assaulted by our membership in the local parish where first we learned to
believe. We all go through a delicate balancing act, using the same words to
express and affirm our faith while knowing we have changed, developed and grown
enormously.
David Richo tries to describe this journey from believing the
Eucharist might bleed to believing that innocent suffering in the world is the
blood of the Eucharist. The words are a lot alike; one is religion, the other
is spirituality. How do we get from religion to spirituality while continuing
to be nourished by religion? In publishing circles, much talk is about
spirituality without religion. Richo is not in that bandwidth. His concern is
how spirituality is nourished by religion, even when religion may be hostile,
childish and literal. He takes on the really difficult task of making religion
yield its treasures despite its recalcitrant guardians.
Richo loves religion. He sees the potential for enriching human
consciousness with the wealth of symbol, ritual, dogma and probably even canon
law. He is profoundly Catholic, understanding how our imaginations are captured
and freed by the sacramental system so many of us have grown to love.
He astutely observes that the rampant fundamentalism of our day is
the logical consequence of the utter secularism embraced in the 60s. He
is also acutely aware, as a Jungian therapist, that the rationalism of academia
and the fundamentalism of TV need to be reconciled. The reconciliation of
opposites is one of the deepest movements of faith. Reconciliation is not a
negotiation, it is a movement of the soul that understands both and moves into
a higher synthesis. One can grant academia all the rigor of human thought and
grant fundamentalism all the fervor of allegiance to a tradition but then
transform and complete their deepest intentions.
Richo addresses the need for outgrowing literalism. Ive
taught high school religion and watched intelligent students grow angry at
being asked to grow past literalism and others, equally indignant, grow angry
at having ever believed literally. Richo does a brilliant job, but if he ever
tried to convince the average parish of his material, he would probably be
stoned. But then, we have a tradition of stoning good teachers who try to
convince us of adult faith.
He effectively crosses back and forth from static to dynamic. For
example, he accepts completely the dogma of the Resurrection. But no sooner has
he made it clear that he accepts it and is nourished by it, he begins to
explain it as a metaphor for the mystery of Gods plan to bring life out
of death. He moves the Resurrection from history to mystery and understands it
as something that not only happened once, but is a constant movement within
human life.
Richo is at home with Buddhist insights, half a dozen Catholic
mystical traditions, some scriptural sophistication and Jungian assumptions. He
puts them all in the service of adult faith. This is not chicken soup for the
soul -- it is a treatise on why we need to outgrow soup and provides a
theological framework for doing so.
Clarence Thomson is a freelance writer and theologian who
teaches scripture in an ecumenical setting.
National Catholic Reporter, August 11,
2000
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