We have discussed Vanier before:
Et tu, Jean Vanier
perhaps it is worthwhile to have a discussion of how do we, both as persons, communities, and institutions, move forward after a mixed history of both good and bad. We don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but we don't want to minimize the evil that has been done. How do we tell the story? How do we prevent similar errors from happening again?
Shattered: Catholic community confronts its founder's lies
The two rounds of revelations about Jean Vanier and the L’Arche federation he founded have rocked the group to its core, all the more because L'Arche itself commissioned independent scholars to investigate after receiving a first complaint from a victim a few years before Vanier died in 2019. It’s the latest case of a Catholic giant, considered a living saint by his admirers and eulogized as a “great” Christian by Pope Francis, falling to revelations that he abused his power to sexually exploit women under his spiritual sway.
Is there something basically unhealthy about the cult of the saints? Or at least a cult of living saints?
“I believed in something, in a vision that then is revealed to you and you’re told it’s not like that,” said Azucena Bustamante, who oversees five L’Arche communities in Honduras, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. “It does frustrate me — the damage it has caused to a lot of people who believed in this, and then found out everything we were made to believe, it’s a lie.”
Born to socially prominent, religiously devout parents — his father was governor general of Canada — Vanier arrived at his calling after having joined a spiritual community, L’Eau Vive, in 1950 that was founded by a French Dominican priest, the Rev. Thomas Philippe.
According to the investigative reports, it was at L’Eau Vive that Vanier fell under Philippe’s spell and was initiated into the priest’s mystical-sexual practices.
The Vatican was informed of Philippe’s deviant practices by two victims in 1952; four years later it sanctioned Philippe for “false mysticism.” The Vatican forbade him from public or private ministry, ordered L’Eau Vive dissolved and its members forbidden from reconstituting the community.
But Philippe, Vanier and the women they had manipulated disobeyed, and regularly met in secret, according to private correspondence and church archives only recently made available to the L’Arche-commissioned researchers.
Over time, Philippe resumed his priestly ministry as his Dominican superiors ignored the Vatican sanctions, at which point Vanier, a layman, founded L’Arche. The study commission concluded in its January report that Vanier did so as a “screen” to hide the reuniting of the original L’Eau Vive group, even though there was also a sincere commitment to help people who otherwise would have been institutionalized.
I think the most difficult aspect of this is the mixture of extraordinary good and extraordinary evil involved. In the presentation of the lives of saints we often gloss over the evil in their lives. Think of both Peter and Paul! One of the authorities on Ignatian spirituality told me that when he was discussing Ignatius with an authority on the life of Ignatius, the scholar said "Well frankly especially at the end of his life, Ignatius was a little strange." Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has an article somewhere in which he discusses the fact that many saints were more than a little strange.
The nearly 900-page forensic history of the scandal is remarkable, providing perhaps the best documented case of a phenomenon that has existed in the Catholic Church for centuries but is increasingly coming to the public fore: spiritual charlatans using false mysticism to manipulate their victims and abuse them sexually.
Significantly, L’Arche was able to obtain a summary report of Phillipe’s 1956 canonical trial, which shows the Vatican was well-versed in the dynamics of abuse of power over women, decades before the #MeToo movement put it in the spotlight.
But the researchers, who hailed from a variety of academic disciplines, blamed the Vatican’s secrecy in handling the Philippe case for laying the groundwork for L’Arche's scandal. They found that no one except a few Vatican and Dominican superiors knew of Philippe's deviance or his sanctions, “precisely what allowed him to maintain his reputation for holiness and to rewrite history as he pleased.”
One of the Vatican's top experts in abuse prevention, the Rev. Hans Zollner, praised L'Arche for its “fearless” courage in exposing the painful truth about its past and said the phenomenon of spiritual gurus misusing their authority can't be ignored any longer by the church.
What Church authorities need act upon is the recognition that not only clerics but lay spiritual gurus can mislead people, and that they cannot assume their control over clerics let alone laity will be effective without public cooperation.
"According to the investigative reports, it was at L’Eau Vive that Vanier fell under Philippe’s spell and was initiated into the priest’s mystical-sexual practices....The Vatican was informed of Philippe’s deviant practices by two victims in 1952; four years later it sanctioned Philippe for “false mysticism.”
ReplyDelete" Mystical sexual practices" are a red flag, or ought to be. That's not to say sexuality is not connected to spiritual life. But that would be in connection to one's vocation. A priest is called to celibate chastity (or in the case of married clergy, faithfulness to their spouse).
Apparently in the case of Phillippe he was acting out sexually with women whom he was in the role of spiritual director. Boundary crossing and big "ick" factor. And doubke ick when you read of some of his twisted theology touching on Jesus and Mary. Apparently Vanier absorbed that.
In the late sixties when I was in graduate school clinical psychology faculty were in sexual relationships with their graduate students and justifying it as part of their education.
DeleteIt took the American Psychological Association empowering several commissions and doing several studies to conclude that this was unhealthy for the graduate students!
Eventually it resulted in the APA ethical guidelines that prevent dual relationships, i.e., one cannot have a sexual relationship with a client, student, etc.
Spiritual direction is a completely unregulated field with no association that has legal authority to license people. It one of the reasons I do not recommend long term spiritual direction. The other is that spiritual direction like long term therapy tends to foster dependency. I think retreats and short- term consultation may be useful.
About them finally coming to the conclusion that a faculty member being in a sexual relationship with a graduate student was unhealthy for graduate students, that comes under the heading of "No Shinola, Sherlock!"
DeleteJean Vanier is not a saint, should not be declared one, and there's no chance of his being canonized, so not sure he is a good example to use when we consider the Church's approach to saint making.
ReplyDeleteThat said, if you want a measure of the RCC's fallibility as an imperfect human institution, you need look no further than saint-making. Candidates' causes are pushed for any number of reasons, and often the factional, economic, or political angles are at play far more than the spiritual. Gianna Molla, Dorothy Day, Joan of Arc, Thomas More, and Pope John Paul II are notable examples.
Some saints were crazy as coots. Francis, Christina the Astonishing come to mind. Some saints were not very nice. I suspect St Martha could be somewhat tart and St Jerome was constantly falling into outright calumny. Some saints tended to scrupulosity or unhealthy mortification of the flesh like St Cuthbert.
I find the saints helpful companions largely because they had faults, sometimes big ones. There is often as much to be learned from the imperfections of the saints as from their holiness.
But a lot of Catholic writing presents them as if they were perfect, which borders on heresy, and it's one of the reasons that people reject saint stories out of hand as fairy tales for the gullible.
I think the 50 year rule is something that the church need to bring back when considering someone's cause for sainthood. A little distance and perspective is helpful.
DeleteFor sure the real saints with all their quirks and problems are more interesting than the sanitized versions we sometimes read about. If they can get to heaven there's hope for me.
It might help in factional or politically motivated causes, but in 50 years, proponents can also do an awful lot of whitewashing, and it's harder to find eye witnesses and clear memories.
DeleteIf the Vatican wanted my advice--which it doesn't--it would ditch the two-miracle rule and patronage designations. Patronage discourages the faithful from viewing saints as people trying to live out the Great Commission and reduces them to "Tony, Tony, look around. Somethin's lost and can't be found."
LOL, as I get older I have to appeal to St. Anthony a lot!
DeleteJPII reduced the required number of “ miracles”:from two to one. He also got rid of the office of Devil’s Advocate. Maybe he was worried he wouldn’t make the cut if the bar was too high.
DeleteActually, I’m with Katherine - St. Anthony is my go-to saint.
Whatever. My point is that Catholics treat the saints like minor deities in charge of cats, happy meetings, lost things, safe travel, dysfunctional families, cancer, etc. After age 10, that doesn't really wash. It might be more spiritually enriching to find out about the people behind the prayers. Just food for thought.
DeleteI thought the one-miracle thing only applied to martyrs. But I confess I don't follow the process, which is legalistic and focuses on signs and wonders, as if striving to lead a holy life isn't sign and wonder enough.
DeleteBut Jean - cradle Catholics are raised to pray to saints to intercede for them when they need a favor from God! They scatter statues around churches of the saints who are most popular. So Catholics zero in on learning which saints are best at procuring the desired favor. Just one of the many problems with the whole concept of intercessory prayer. (As if people can’t ask God themselves)
DeleteThe saints are important to me. They were my way in to Christianity. I believe they help give me the strength to pray at all.
DeleteAsking their assistance means I am not going to Jesus with my bare face hanging out, but that I have friends there with me, helping me to find the words.
I am sorry, I don't seem to be able to convey this very well. I just don't like to see the saints trivialized and their veneration made fun of. I think the Church is, to some extent, accountable for that.
I don't believe much, but I believe with all my heart that the saints are in heaven helping us.
Jean, you are fortunate that the saints provide you with so much spiritual sustenance and inspiration. I wish I had had the same experience with them as you have had, but unfortunately I haven’t. Perhaps it’s the way I was taught about saints when I was young. Maybe the church is partly responsible for my lack of connection with saints. I’ve never been able to imagine them as friends who would help me if I need it. (Except for St Anthony) So much of what I eventually came to reject in the church was what I was taught in my 1950s and early 60s Catholic upbringing. I was ready to leave the church in college. But the priest who taught my theology course junior year in Paris spent hours after class drinking coffee and talking with me in cafes, telling me about Vatican II. He convinced me to stay in the church. Then.
DeleteI look at the Catholic Church in America now, and it seems almost back to where it was in the 1950 s and early 60s. If the church followed Pope Francis, who is much more a Vatican II priest than his several predecessors, I would probably have been back in Catholic pews by now. But it has refused to listen to Pope Francis, at least in the US.
I don’t know if they do any better now at teaching kids about the saints in a more positive way than they did when I was a kid. It’s probably good that you were already an adult when you met them. As a child and teenager, most of the stories of the Lives of the Saints repelled me more than attracted me to want to try to be like them, with the notable exceptions of St. Francis and St. Christopher. And then they decided that St Christopher wasn’t real, the story wasn’t true, and that was one story that had genuinely appealed to me. So I gave up on saints.
My lack of belief in intercessory prayer is not related to the saints, but to the concept itself.
I don't really have an emotional connection with most of the saints, but I find them interesting and enjoy reading about them. The bad part is that I really don't have an emotional connection to the Virgin Mary. I say the rosary and revere her as the queen of heaven. But some people say that they really feel about her like a mother. Which would make me feel a bit disloyal to my real mother. I think maybe the apple didn't fall too far from the tree. Mom had the same issue.
DeleteA quote I like from Teresa of Avila.
DeleteTo reach something good, it is helpful to have gone astray
Based on my limited experience with RCIA and The Boy's CCD, the Church ignores the saints.
DeleteAmerican Catholics get accused of "worshipping" saints and saint statues by Protestants, and given centuries of lurid accretions to hagiography many of these stories strain credulity. I think veneration has been discouraged as a result.
Nice quote from St Teresa. I think wrestling with doubt was central to her life. Probably to the life of most of the saints.
I'm no psychologist, but Eros and Agape would seem to be not easily compatible. Agape supports marriage and altruistic celibacy. And Eros, does it ever really go away? Vanier and Philippe seemed to have found one unsuitable way to "harmonize" the two loves. It is not uncommon for sex and religion to be entwined. Is it just horny people putting on a camouflage of religion or, in some cases, are the two dimensions linked and mutually reinforcing. Should the two be compartmentalized or can they be harmonized in a positive way? I dunno.
ReplyDeletePeople have urges and big imaginations. I think religion deals with sex best when it tries to promote the notion of common decency and responsibility in ALL interactions instead of making rules about specific acts, practices, attitudes, devices, etc. By any stretch, what these two yahoos were doing would not fit the "common decency" or "responsible" categories.
DeleteI think it can go both ways. But horny people certainly can put on a camouflage of religion, to the detriment of religion.
DeleteGood point about eros and agape being in opposition at times.
There is no "love" in sexual abuse or coercion.
DeleteAll saints are imperfect human beings. What disqualifies (or should disqualify) Vanier, Maciel and McCarrick from being held up as spiritual role models, is they used their ministerial positions to abuse others. In other words, it was precisely because of their ministry that they were able to victimize others. To my way of thinking, that's a different sort of failing than, say, Jerome detracting the people he was having disputes with.
ReplyDeleteDidn't St. Bernard initiate at least one crusade? Yet, if I am not mistaken, he also undertook necessary reforms in his religious order.
I guess my view is that ministerial hypocrisy should be disqualifying, but perhaps not every sin should be disqualifying. If Dorothy Day's "issue" is that she had an abortion at one point in her life - I don't see that as ipso facto disqualifying.
Not that anybody at my parish holds me up as a guru, but various people over the years have let me know that they admire this or that thing about me - some thing or another which is visible to them. Spiritually, that sort of thing is perilous as hell - perhaps for both the admirer and the one one being admired. Most of them don't really know me; they see whatever sliver of me is on display on Sundays or evenings.
ReplyDeleteI see, more and more clearly, that if I'm able to accomplish anything good in my ministry, it's because of Jesus. As long as I am able to point to him, I think I'm okay. As soon as I start believing it's my own doing, I'm in trouble.
We all have free will, and at the heart of any saint is the CHOICE to try to follow Jesus. It's a two-way deal. You have to have said "yes" at some point.
DeleteIf it helps to give all the credit to Christ to avoid the sin of pride, fine.
But let's not pretend that there are plenty of people out there who've given a flat-out "no" or (like me) are hedging around with "maybe" and hair-splitting and rationalizing, who will be standing on the wrong side of the Narrow Gate when That Day comes.
Not sure where standing on the wrong side of the Narrow Gate comes into what I mentioned. I think there is spiritual danger in attaching oneself too uncritically to a religious leader: cf Maciel and Vanier. The sin of pride definitely is a hazard to the leader. For the one who is following, I guess the danger is having one's faith shattered when the guru inevitably proves to be a fallible human.
DeleteI think that Vanier and Maciel were a whole lot worse than just “ fallible” human beings. But religion very often causes people to ignore danger signals. It teaches then that their “ leaders” must be obeyed. Until the churches start teaching people that only God MUST be obeyed - not human beings these scandals will continue. In the Protestant world the abuse is usually against women. In American Orthodox Judaism it is often the young who are victims, as in the RCC.
DeleteThe vows in Catholic religious orders, and all the way up to Catholic cardinals, demand obedience to human superiors. This caused a big problem with the Vanier situation, and with Maciel, who molested kids who had been taught to always say “Yes, Father”. Priests and deacons swear obedience to bishops. Who are men. Not God. So even when many priests suspected or even knew for sure about sexual abuse of kids they kept their mouths shut - as was demanded of them by the bishops, by the church. The church also demanded it of bishops and cardinals- secrecy was required in order to “avoid scandal” and protect Holy Mother church. The oath taken by Cardinals is to the Pope - obedience to the man, not to God.
Just for information, the rule of pontifical secrecy was lifted:
Deletehttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50824842
This article was from 2019.
BTW, we need to pray for Pope Francis, who is in the hospital with some type of serious respiratory infection. Which isn't a minor matter for an 86 year old with one lung.
There is an interesting article at Commonweal for those interested in saints and martyrs - especially martyrs. It addresses the proposition that Christianity is a cult of the dead.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/martyrs-christ-death-kyle-smith-stephen
I was glad I read all the way to the end of the article, because the author finally gets to his point in the final paragraph:
Delete"Christ was not worshiped for the manner of his death but because he was raised from the dead as “Life-giving Spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45); Stephen was the prototypical martyr because in his witness he saw the risen Christ; the martyrs gave their mortal lives as witness precisely to the truth of the Resurrection; the honor shown martyrs and the prayers addressed to them is based on the same belief: that, with all the other saints, they are alive in the presence of God; and that, as members of the Church triumphant, they can come to the assistance of the afflicted among the church militant. Christianity is not, in fact, a cult of the dead. It is, rather, the celebration of God’s life."
Thanks for posting the article.
DeleteSomeone in my Old English group has an interesting theory that pagan cultures, in the first blush of conversion, enthusiastically latched onto martyrdom stories as a familiar parallel with their pagan notions about human sacrifice, which was a common feature in North Sea pagan cultures. (It is also fun to read the Old English version of Exodus, in which Moses is a warrior hero dueling and taunting with Pharoah a la Beowulf with his magical staff.)
It has also been noted that human sacrifice is a universal phenomenon in primitive cultures around the world. There is something deep in the human psyche that is drawn to the mystery of death and plays out in pagan rituals. It's really not surprising to see this getting stirred into early European Christianity.
There was also an idea for awhile that only martyrs could get to heaven. So the idea of "white martyrdom," withdrawing from the world an in a hermitage, cloister, or anchorage, was popular, particularly among the Irish. St Brendan the Voyager was a white martyr. Reading that story is quite a trip!
Interesting comments, as usual, Jean. Moses as Beowulf or maybe even Gandalf.
DeleteGee, if you enjoyed that, let me tell you about the Anglo-Saxon cremation urns. Some of these were just big mead bowls that were passed around at the immolation. When the booze ran out, the ashes were collected and put in the urn by whoever was still sober enough to collect them. Then they were buried. Some urns had clever little handles at the top shaped like people or animals, and were decorated on the sides with special symbols and runes. Many had maker marks on the bottom that seems to indicate there was quite a nice business in the pottery trades, and possibly the urn that got passed hand to hand was a good way to advertise the potter's skill.
DeleteHere's a taste of Exodus:
DeleteWhen in the desert, the Lord of Armies, the Truth-Fast King,
with his own might worthied Moses, and gave to him
many wonders into his possession, the Eternal All-Wielder.
He was dear to God, the Ruler of Tribes, daring
and prudent, the head of the host, their strong commander.
He bound the kindred of Pharaoh, the opponent of God,
by the afflictions of his staff.
There the Sovereign of Victories
gave to the proud chief, the son of Abraham
the lives of his kinsmen and the habitation of a homeland. (8-18)
Haha, did they run this version of Exodus past the CDF, Jean? I read once in an article that, initially for a while, there were Nordic Christian churches that had statues of Jesus and Thor. If so, proselytizing and transition from paganism was a lot more flexible than it is today.
DeleteI certainly approve of their funeral rites. You've given me some ideas maybe combined with a New Orleans jazz band.
They didn't run much of anything past Rome. It's a pretty late MSS, 900s, maybe part of the effort to reach common people and move them off their attachment to the old dieties using the familiar heroic poetic forms. Like those Bible story comics from the 1950s.
DeleteThe pagan Danes were ramming around at that time and controlled the north, and their line was, why pay tribute to king and church, when you can just kick up to us plus we have better parties.
Yes, that funerary custom does have some appeal. Just pray nobody breaks the urn while passing it around or they'll have to stash you in the Igloo cooler they brought the beer in.
Jean, very interesting information. Years ago I took a course at a Catholic grad school of theology in Christian Spirituality during the First Thousand Years. I was particularly repelled by The Spirituality of Martyrdom. Your explanation doesn’t make it less awful, but it sure does a better job explaining it, putting it into the context of the historical era, than our professor was able to do.
ReplyDeleteIn analogous news, some chapters of the Audubon Society no longer want to bear the Audubon name because he owned nine slaves and expressed racist views. But at least he liked birds.
ReplyDeleteJim said
ReplyDeleteNot that anybody at my parish holds me up as a guru, but various people over the years have let me know that they admire this or that thing about me - some thing or another which is visible to them. Spiritually, that sort of thing is perilous as hell - perhaps for both the admirer and the one being admired.
In the four situations in which I have experienced being part of a successful senior management group (mental health center, pastoral staff, mental health funding board, Voice of the Faithful diocesan leadership) these things happened:
We were a very talented, diverse group who supported each other. I felt great freedom to be creative, but I was very focused upon the people whom we served and what needed to be done as were other members of the group. I became very unaware of myself and what others thought of me. In retrospect it is amazing at some of the risks I took. I also was very unaware of the positive impacts I personally was having on others until much later when I had left the group. I also felt no sense of loss when I moved on. All of these I regard as aspects of grace.
One might label these groups as servant leadership groups, or as charismatic leadership groups.
My theory is that one of the primary ways God acts in daily history is through being able to control how much of his inspiration we see in ourselves and others. Seeing the giftedness of others encourages us to collaborate. When I see my own giftedness affirmed it encourages me to collaborate.
Sometimes I fail to see the giftedness of others where others seem to see it. Sometimes others fail to see my giftedness where others have seen it. In both cases, I have found it is best to move on. God is not inviting me to collaborate. When God wants us to collaborate, he often turns down our awareness of his presence within us and our awareness of own needs in order to amplify his presence in others.
The Seeds of Contemplation insight of Merton, namely that every moment is a seed of spiritual growth had a profound effect on my life. Half way through life, I discovered the corollary that at every moment of my life, God is giving my life to others, often without either my awareness or theirs. The challenge is one of awareness and discernment leading to spiritual growth.
I think God is a God of probabilities who loves human freedom and gives us many chances to collaborate for human welfare and happiness amid the chaos of existence. We discover God in ourselves in the process of discovering God in others, history, and nature. Both individuals and groups run the risk of worshipping an idol of God based upon our past experiences or making some of present experiences into an idol of God.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting your point that God is manipulating things here to push or discourage collaboration.
DeleteAnd if He is, then His will gets thwarted a lot by competing human circumstances and demands.
Forgive the long example: I was a really good writer for an educational textbook company for a few years. But then the company started to throw me into more management and oversight, dealing with marketing, budgets, and supervision. The company reorganized just before I went on maternity leave, and my job would have been all management and client liaising and travel when I returned. That wasn't going to work with a newborn, so I spent my maternity leave looking for a new job.
Found a job with a very nice firm, but two of the field managers discovered I was really good at public speaking and thinking on my feet, and they did me the "favor" of getting me on the road again. Again, just didn't work with a newborn, so took the deep pay cut and went back to teaching.
I saw gifts in others and vice versa. I enjoyed the work. But I also had a baby that I was not bonding with, Raber did not want to be left alone with the baby, and I worked with people who wanted to change my job to suit them.
I didn't see God in any of this.
I don’t see God in our world much, if at all, as far as human activity is concerned. God is very visible in creation though, but not in how people act. Some act for the good due to religious belief, but many who lack religious belief do also. The history of the world also shows that religious beliefs have been integrally involved in most of the wars of history. But God isn’t the one orchestrating religious violence.
DeleteI don’t believe, as some do, that God has a plan for every person. I don’t believe that God actively intervenes in human affairs. People do have individual gifts and talents. These can be used for good or for not so good. But God doesn’t decide that Jack will use his gifts to collaborate with others to accomplish a worthy goal. Jack could use his gifts to do something destructive too.
God lets us do the deciding on how we use whatever gifts we might have. The gifts aren’t something we can take credit for - most are inborn talents and personality traits.God doesn’t tell us how to use our individual particular talents. We decide how to use them.
Jean, maybe God had a hand in you ending up as a teacher, who knows? Teachers are important, maybe more so than marketing execs who travel around.
DeleteI don't know how God operates.
DeleteBut if God wanted me to be a teacher, then I have to entertain the idea that God also wanted me to have alcoholic parents, miscarriages, cancer, and be broke when I retired.
My sense is that all this stuff is the result of genetics, bad decisions, the capitalist system, and random accidents.
God is there to help you try to do the right thing despite all that.
If he's a puppet master in charge of everything that happens to us, God is one sick SOB.
I don't think God is anything like a puppet master, if he was, life would be less chaotic and dangerous, but way less interesting. I do think he helps us find an open window when doors get slammed in our face, but he wasn't the one who slammed them. I know he helped me find a few egress (or were they entrance?) windows.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteKatherine, could you describe exactly how God helped you find the open windows? Also, what would you think if you never found an open window? Is that God’s doing also?
DeleteIt is my observation that people give God a lot of credit when things go right. If someone gets better after being at death’s door they attribute it to intercessory prayer. If they lose the job they need ( the window slammed shut) and they find a new opportunity fairly quickly - even if in a different field- they say God opened a new window for them. But they never attribute the failure of medical care, much less a death, to God. Nor do they say God refused to open new doors when they needed one. When things turn out ok they say God helped them, guided them.. But they never blame God when things don’t turn out ok. They blame someone or something else. Then they may say that God gave them the strength they needed to get through it. But sometimes people don’t get through it. They fall apart, one way or another. It often seems like magical thinking when they think God helps, rather than just a fortunate roll of the dice. It’s a lot easier to believe in a God who cares when things turn out ok. A lot harder when disaster strikes and new doors don’t open.
DeleteI think of God less as a manipulator of events than as the spirit of endurance in bad times, the ability to pull yourself back to the Great Commission.
DeleteI am critical, nitpicky, argumentative, and downright bitter about a lot of things. But my daily prayer is to leave off being mean as a snake and to receive the grace to rise above and not tear people down so much.
Julian of Norwich said God can only love. So I presume prayer is supposed to open up you, or the people you pray for, to love that raises up. It doesn't matter what happens here as long as you keep your hand on the plow, as it were.
Anne, here is an example of doors opening and closing for me. I don't think God opened or closed them, but I do think he gave me insights about which way to turn. I had completed three years of college when we got married. Our first home was in a small town where my husband was teaching high school math and physics. The nearest college where I could have completed my degree was 90 miles away, so it didn't happen. I would have said that it was a mistake not to finish that fourth year before we got married, but as our oldest son pointed out, if I had done that, he might not have been born. And I am very thankful that he was born. I do think God wanted him to be here.
DeleteAbout ten years later we ended up living in Ft. Collins CO. Where there was a university. A rather expensive one. I could only afford to take one class at a time. My previous major was biology with a chemistry minor, but I was interested by this time in graphic design. I took three classes, but could see that I wasn't going to finish with doing one class at a time. Our younger son was in lower grade school, and when I was doing homework he liked to draw and paint too. He went with me sometimes when I had to pick up assignments and such at the college. I had to give up the idea of completing a degree in that field; there was not much in the way of financial aid available.
Then we moved back to Nebraska. Job opportunities in graphic design didn't look great, so I went back to my original major and got an associate degree in biotechnology at the community college. Couldn't find a job in my field and worked at something else for three years in a job I disliked. Then we moved again, this time to the town where we have lived for 28 years. I did find a job in my field and worked there for 24 years.
The son who liked to draw and paint ended up getting a degree in graphic design, and works in that field. I still draw and paint and entered two pictures in an art show today. My husband has said that his experiences in the towns we lived in led him to consider entering the diaconate, but he would not have been able to do that when we lived in the Lincoln diocese, as they have no formation program, and the location wasn't a good fit for him anyway. So a lot of doors got closed; I don't think it was God's doing but the vagaries of economics in the late 20th century. But I do think God inspired some of the paths we did take, like in Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken".
So, sorry for the long shaggy dog story, but you did ask!
No longer than my shaggy dog story. :). The difference is that you think your decisions were the result of God giving you some kind of insight in a mysterious way when making your decisions, whereas I might say that you made them based on your intelligence and life experiences. I don’t think God guided me on my job/career decisions, but that I learned from my experiences - and mistaken choices - what kind of work best suited my personality and interests. Jean had talent that her employers recognized, but her work decisions had to take into account her family needs - as yours did - and their priority. So she went back to teaching - which she also enjoyed and was very good at - even though she couldn’t earn as much money. I think that God gave us the wherewithal to make decisions when doors open or close, or when we enter the wrong doors, or make decisions for the wrong reasons, and realize through our God- given intelligence and our life experiences that we need to try again. But I don’t think God whispered in my mind that I should leave the computer career path, even though it paid extremely well and was very secure, to start over as a self-employed consultant with zero security, the need to constantly shake trees to find new gigs, earning less money with no paid holidays, vacations, health insurance or a retirement plan contributed to by an employer. Fortunately the health insurance was covered by my husband’s job. But that career path was far better for me than the computer world would have been. However I was lucky because I could afford the income cut and loss of health insurance because of my husband’s job. But not everyone is so lucky. The roll of the dice worked out for me, but the opposite could have happened, as it did to my mother - who lost her husband and our home in her 50s, and had to find a job even though she hadn’t worked in 30 years —- since she had children. So she took a job at 55 that paid next to nothing, but provided a room for her to live in. She was a devout Catholic who prayed a lot. But God didn’t guide her to the right husband, nor did God tell her that she needed to go back to work when my dad wasn’t keeping up with the bills, or even after we lost our house in LA to foreclosure. Somehow they scraped together enough money for a down payment for a tiny cabin in the mountains. But that home was sold in the divorce to pay my dad’s debts, so my mother was left with nothing. She prayed a lot for guidance, but God didn’t help her in her decision- making. She had a college degree and at one point a teaching certificate, but didn’t keep it active. It convinced me to get an advanced degree and to work to keep my knowledge and skills up in case I ever needed to get a full time job with benefits again and support our sons by myself. That never happened and my husband is going strong at 82, but I did have classmates who were widowed young, or whose husbands divorced them as happened to my mother.
DeleteJean So I presume prayer is supposed to open up you, or the people you pray for, to love that raises up.
DeleteI agree with this.
I don't ever remember praying for specifics. "Oh Lord, wont'cha buy me a color TV". For other people's health, I guess. I've done ok. Not much to pray for for myself. 74 years of good health and financial stability, what's left to pray for except others and to straighten out this screwed-up nasty unfair society. And mainly to connect with God.
DeleteJack , I think you had a profound statement," I think God is a God of probabilities who loves human freedom and gives us many chances to collaborate for human welfare and happiness amid the chaos of existence. We discover God in ourselves in the process of discovering God in others, history, and nature. Both individuals and groups run the risk of worshipping an idol of God based upon our past experiences or making some of present experiences into an idol of God."
ReplyDeleteI think we are sent here for a purpose; but not a micromanaged predetermined purpose. God very much respects our free will. We each have gifts that can be used for the betterment of others and society. I think some people are supposed to be together, for instance our spouses and children, but it doesn't always work out that way because of the free will wild card. The catechism answer of why we are here, "to know, love and serve God in this world, and to be happy with him in the next", doesn't seem far wrong, if we keep aiming toward that goal.
God is a God of probabilities. Looking at physics, that seems to be the case. A photon passes through a slit. The narrower the slit, the less you know about where it will hit in the future. The more you know about its now, the less you know about its future. If that's true of something like an electron, who knows what applies to a human life.
DeleteJean said
ReplyDeleteForgive the long example…. I didn’t see God in any of this.
I don’t belief that God writes straight with crooked lines.
In my high school years, I found God in beautiful liturgy, contemplation, science and math, and in my families love and the care of some of my teachers. Given the choices that I had available, the life of a Jesuit priest who taught college students math or science seemed a pretty good choice.
When I arrived in novitiate, I did find God in my many talented fellow novices, but I did not find God in my Jesuit superiors. Like Jean’s corporate superiors they were more concerned about the jobs they had to fill than my gifts and talents. They were particularly concerned that my lack of interest in sports would turn off high school students!
Most Jesuits taught high school for three years between philosophy and theology. The Jesuits on the eve of the council were in much need of reform. The band of idealistic religious knights serving Christ envisioned by Ignatius had become a bureaucratic army with Novitiate as its boot camp.
When I went to college at Saint John’s I concluded that all religious orders were basically modern corporations with little concern for their employees. I did find God in the social sciences, as well as in my ability to listen to my fellow students. I did not find God when I volunteered in the psychiatric ward at the local VA hospital. I also felt that I could not be an effective clinical psychologist without integrating spirituality into my practice.
I did not find God in graduate school. Like novitiate it seemed to be another institution that functioned too bureaucratically. I almost left to get a college teaching job after my masters. Faculty did convince me to stay by involving me heavily in their research. So though graduate research followed by three years of postdoctoral research, I became a good technician doing research that held little interest to me.
Migration to the mental health system doing applied research and policy making changed everything. A deep well of creativity opened. At every moment I seemed to know exactly what to do to help my fellow administrators, clinical managers, front line clinical works, the mentally ill, their family members and the various stakeholders in mental health such as medical, criminal justice, and educational system. Nothing remotely similar had ever happened to me in academia or in the church.
Maybe I just got lucky. But I listed above four very different senior management groups in which very similar things happened. It was not just me. I have no illusions that I could just step into any senior management group and have things happen, although at times that seemed to be the case. In all groups I am aware of how important everyone else was, and how impossible it would have been to go it alone. Hence my belief that God acts through helping us to discern where truth, beauty, goodness lies in the people around us.
Certainly a lot to be said for finding your niche and feeling your work matters.
DeleteJack, I don’t deal with bureaucracies very well either. I worked for a couple of huge organizations- IBM for three years after college when they trained me to be a computer programmer/analyst and then the World Bank. I was good at programming and especially at systems analysis, and my boss talked with me about an eventual management position. But I did not want to stay a programmer, nor did I want to be a manager. So I worked for a couple of other small companies while getting my Econ masters at night, to keep the income coming in to pay tuition at Georgetown. With the MA completed I was able to get a research job with a senior economist at the World Bank. That was the best job I ever had in spite of it being a huge international organization. The work was fascinating and my boss was brilliant. But the bureaucracy was another story. My boss taught me more the first year than all my masters courses did. I was supposed to continue for a PhD. My boss told me that one of the research projects I did for him was so good that it had me 2/3 the way to a dissertation with a bit more work (he had two PhDs). But my first child was due in September when school started, so I deferred. I also quit my job because my boss had moved on. They would have paid for the rest of the coursework I needed for the PhD, and I had a big headstart on a dissertation, but I decided i wanted to be at home. The following September I was pregnant again, my firstborn was a real handful, so I deferred again. Eventually I got a letter from Georgetown saying that if I didn’t register for classes I would have to start over again. By then son #3 was a baby. So I never got the PhD. But after a while I was a bit bored with only my wonderful young sons to talk to. I missed the intellectual stimulation of working, and I missed international economics. My sons weren’t interested in discussing the latest G7 meeting. So I became an independent research analyst. This gave me the freedom I wanted to make my own schedule, to work only on projects that interested me, to work only for companies whose work interested me, to work from home most of the time. I also quickly realized that being a consultant rather than an employee excused me from participation in office politics. Plus, I didn’t have to deal with the corporate bureaucracy. I am not a leader. No interest in leadership roles. But I am also very independent, work well on my own and also with the staff members of the clients, but I worked mostly from home. So being a consultant turned out to be the perfect career path for me. It was never a plan. I just into it. I was lucky, but I don’t think God arranged any of it. Like you, I had to try a few things before finding my niche. However, I wanted work that I felt had meaning, that might help improve lives, as my own spirituality had turned to social justice. My international economics focus was with companies working to discover the best approaches for developing the economies of the poorest countries. My donations today all go to NGOs who work with the poor - in the US it’s Catholic Charities, but most of it goes to international NGOs working with the poor and with refugees in the camps.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to hear everyone's career stories.
ReplyDeleteLots of severe weather alerts out for tonight. Thunder is moving in here now. Please stay safe and alert!