The word made
fresh New thinkers Can mystics matter?
By ARTHUR JONES
Osama bin Laden may still be in
Afghanistans caves. Americans by the millions avoid airline flights.
Every major accident is probed for terrorist connections, and Frederick
Bauerschmidt is writing a book called Why the Mystics Matter (Sorin/Ave
Marie Press).
One wonders why, at a time like this, mystics might matter.
The first thing that comes to mind, said Loyola
College, Baltimore, Md., theologian Bauerschmidt, is Julian of
Norwichs line: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all
manner of thing shall be well.
Julian lived in the second half of the 14th century, a
low-point marked by plague and war, said Bauerschmidt, currently
directing Loyolas study abroad program at the Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven (Louvain, Belgium). Yet she retained a deep faith that all that
happens is, often in a way that is hidden from us, grounded in Gods love
for us.
The mystic was no Pollyanna, said Bauerschmidt, 40. She
knew, apparently from hard experience, that the circumstances of life often
push us to the breaking point. But they never push us beyond the reach of
Gods power, Gods wisdom, and Gods love. Julian writes,
God did not say: You shall not be storm-tossed, you shall not be
travailed, you shall not be afflicted; but God said: You shall not be
overcome. There is in this a marvelous combination of realism and
hope that I find comforting.
Equally important, Bauerschmidt said, is what the mystics do not
say: They do not counsel a retreat into the inner life in a quest for
safe haven from lifes vicissitudes. The Maryland-born, South
Carolina-raised scholar -- also a combination housemaster-cum-Mary Poppins to
Loyola and Belgian students at Loyolas international house -- said,
If we look at Bernard of Clairvaux, Catherine of Siena, Meister Eckhart,
Teresa of Avila, we see people very engaged in the issues and controversies of
their times. But we also see a certain detachment that comes from placing
events in a larger context. Contemplative practices cultivate what we might
call a broader horizon in which we can situate events.
The mystics can give us examples of how to practice the
detachment that allows us to withstand the heated rhetoric that troubled times
seem to produce -- while at the same time remaining unflagging in our
engagement with and concern for those who suffer.
Bauerschmidt, the latest interview -- and the first by e-mail --
in NCRs series on young scholars, majored in religion at the
University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. There he became a Catholic at age
20.
His conversion, he said, was very literary. I was reading
books by Graham Greene, Flannery OConnor, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton,
but I knew virtually no Catholics -- once very easy in the South.
Watching people pray
His family were not regular churchgoers (though his brother is now
an Episcopal priest). When I started going to Mass, the general
tawdriness of Catholicism startled me a bit. I was expecting something
austerely beautiful but found Madonnas draped in Christmas lights
instead. Yet he was profoundly moved by the deeper beauty of the
devotion of those around me at early morning weekday Masses. I think of these
people -- whose names I never knew -- as my sponsors, since watching them pray
was the beginning of my formation as a Catholic.
At college, Bauerschmidt -- generally known as Fritz rather than
Frederick -- thought he might be a writer, until he took the required
Introduction to Religion course and found that I liked writing about
theological and religious questions, and that I seemed to be good at
it.
After college he spent three years with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps
in Texas, earned his masters in religion from Yale Divinity and his
doctorate in theology and ethics from Duke.
The biggest challenge to his faith was reading Nietzsche.
Im convinced Nietzsche remains the most profound critic of Christianity.
What strikes me is the way Nietzsche doesnt attack the truth of
Christianity, but rather the very notion of truth itself.
Nietzsche, he said, is someone who asks us to stare
unflinchingly into the abyss of a world without God -- with no consolation from
liberal humanism, which he sees as simply the rotting corpse of
Christianity. (In his book, Bauerschmidt has a chapter on How To
Live in a World Without God.)
Bauerschmidts solution to his crisis of faith, he said,
was to simply continue going to church and wait out the storm. I never
came up with anything like a refutation of Nietzsches criticisms. Rather
I handled my intellectual difficulties in a piecemeal fashion. I think I
learned from this the importance of practices to Christianity.
Had I ceased practicing during that time I would not be a
Christian today, he said. Thinking my way through my doubts, I
would likely have concluded that Nietzsche was right. But Christianity is not
simply a theory about the world, but a way of being in the world. If it is
reduced to a theory, then I think it can well fall under Nietzsches
critique.
The Loyola theologian, a visiting professor on Louvains
theology faculty, said of his student flock: In my more acerbic moments I
think of Caesarius of Arles, the 5th-century Gallican bishop who presided over
a flock that was Christian by virtue of their baptism but almost entirely pagan
in their practice. His sermons contain wonderful exhortations to his listeners
not to bring their swords to church and not to go worship at the sacred oak
next Wednesday.
I think our times are not too different, Bauerschmidt
said, except cell phones not swords are our weapon of choice and the
stock market is the sacred oak.
In my less acerbic moments, I think of my wonderful students
who really want to live the faith they profess to have, and students of no
faith who think that theology raises questions that deserve serious
thought.
Their questions I have the most difficulty answering are not
about the Trinity or Christology, but, I am about to become the godmother
of my sisters new baby. What am I supposed to do for her? or
What exactly am I supposed to do after I receive Communion and go back to
my pew?
Bauerschmidt said the four people currently teaching him about God
are his wife, Maureen Sweeney (an immigration lawyer with Catholic Charities in
Baltimore until the familys move to Belgium in 2000), and their three
children, Thomas, 9, Sophia, 6, and Denis, 4.
Fragmented theology
Theology currently is incredibly fragmented, he said, with
Catholics who think that liberation theology in its myriad forms (Mestizo,
Asian, African, feminist, womanist and so on) is still the way forward. Others,
especially some younger theologians, prefer what might broadly be called
ressourcement [a term meaning a return to the sources,
originally associated with such theologians from the 1950s and 60s such
as Jean Danielou and Henri de Lubac]. Radical Orthodoxy, one variety of
ressourcement, is distinctive in the directness with which it engages
with postmodern, post-Nietzschean thought. I suppose this is more or less where
I fit.
Bauerschmidt said many ressourcement theologians believe
that only a profound immersion in the sources of the Christian tradition --
especially scripture and the theological tradition up to and including Aquinas
-- can provide the answers to the questions facing the church today. Often
these theologians show a great enthusiasm for both the person and the
philosophy of Pope John Paul II and see themselves as part of his call for a
new evangelization, he said.
At the same time, he said, I worry that too many theologians
my age and younger who are interested in a return to the sources are facilely
dismissive of the theology of liberation, whose pioneers drank deeply from the
waters of the original ressourcement that led to Vatican II.
Liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, Bauerschmidt said,
has indicated his profound indebtedness to de Lubacs writings on
nature and grace. And I think the theology of liberation at its best can serve
as a constant reminder that a return to the sources is always a radical
movement and not a way to shore up the status quo.
Forced to generalize, Bauerschmidt said hed say Catholics
are developing a sense of their countercultural identity, but in a very
fragmented way: Liberationists are often very countercultural on issues
like economics and the death penalty and war, but on abortion and other
so-called social issues often total sellouts to modern notions of
personal autonomy.
By contrast, he said, Ressourcement types are
countercultural on questions of abortion and in their general critique of
American culture, but they tend to be uncritical of the economic forces that
foster the very culture they despise. Also, they tend to approach the
structures and institutions of the nation, and of the church, as if they could
do no wrong.
I worry, he said, that in the
ressourcement revival theres a tendency to dismiss the efforts of
theologians following the council, or to see any and all modern developments as
inimical to Christianity. Some see any criticism of the church or the tradition
as disloyalty. If, for example, you say that the church has a poor track record
regarding women or Jews, some think that you are engaged in a wholesale
sell-out to pagan modernity. This is, of course, silly since part of the
tradition of the church is its tradition of self-criticism.
Bauerschmidt said he hopes a consistently and constructively
critical theological voice will emerge. But he said that is possible
only if you have some vantage point from which to be critical,
which he sees as the great strength of the ressourcement.
Traditions make comeback
Of course the problem with this, he said, is
that it can turn into an exercise in nostalgia. I think Gregorian chant and the
rosary are wonderful parts of the Catholic tradition and Im happy
theyre making something of a comeback. I also dont think that they
are sufficient as practices for sustaining a critical worldview. What are the
key practices? I have no clear idea. But that is perhaps the most crucial
theological question for the church today.
Bauerschmidt finds nothing clears the head like reading a
couple of articles from the Summa Theologica. But his main
interest is in the intersection of Christianity and modernity,
particularly in the way in which modernity has changed the shape of
everyday life.
I am increasingly troubled by the way in which modern
patterns of living turn us into rootless units of consumption rather than
creatures of a loving God, he said. I want to be a theologian who
serves the church -- in the sense of helping pastors and the people in the pews
to live more deeply the Catholic tradition.
I think that if I really had the courage of my
convictions, he said, I would seek out some sort of living
situation in an intentional community that sought to model the kind of patterns
of everyday life in which Christian faith can flourish.
I suppose what scares me is that life in such a community
might well be incompatible with being a college professor, Bauerschmidt
said. But then Jesus called us to be disciples, not
professionals.
And that least assertive of mystics, Thérèse of
Lisieux, counsels the most countercultural approach of all. As Bauerschmidt
notes, Thérèse recommends: Let us love our
littleness.
Arthur Jones is NCRs editor at large. His e-mail address
is ajones96@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, February 1,
2002
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