How Pope Francis is Ending Religion: Part Deux

My previous article, How Pope Francis is Ending Religion, was received well but created some controversy. Many of the more articulate responses questioned my definition of religion. One gentleman thoughtfully responded:

“What you mean by "religion" seems to remain unclear. That you insinuate a) that the Catholic religion is one among many others and b) religion as such might be beneficially ended. These notions indicate that you are straying from orthodoxy - though hopefully inadvertently. I took some time to formulate a reply to your blog. I hope this will provoke some discussion between us for the benefit of the readers. I trust there is more in this piece that you will agree with than disagree - your thoughts appreciated. Thanks. http://catholicveritas.com/blog/ending-religion”

My response is: The main purpose of religion is to lead you to an experience of who you are in God and who God is in you. A healthy religion should realign, re-heal, reconnect all things and reposition us toward an attitude of love and charity. Basically, when you say you love God, you are saying you love everything and everyone. No exceptions. Religion is to remind us of and bring us to the experience of God's tremendous love for us. We return His love by the way we live our lives. Religion does not exist to provide us rituals that need to be performed in order to repay Him for His sacrifice or make us worthy of His love. He loves us anyway.

The Bible is not the story of our search for God, but of God’s loving, endless search for us. Similarly, “Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man.” (Mark 2:27). In other words, God does not love us because we are good, God loves us because God is good and we are good because God loves us. We do not earn God’s love nor repay Him in any way by attending Mass or praying the rosary. We do those things out of thanksgiving because of God’s love for us; and when we do, God showers us with more grace so that we can give Him what He really wants: to share His mercy and love with others.

Jesus told us that the great commandment of God is the invitation to love God above all else and to love your neighbor as yourself. That is the one, great, central law that all other laws point to. However, like the Scribes and Pharisees, we are human and invariably we lose perspective. Jesus regularly criticized them for “abandoning the commandment of God and holding to human traditions” and consequently getting overly- focused on rituals to do with “the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles”. We are too often guilty of the same. We tend to lose focus of the fundamental message.

That is not to say laws and rituals are bad or not needed. They in fact are good and needed, provided that that they never stand alone, are not self-serving, and are bending to the one great commandment to love God and neighbor. St. Augustine once proposed that we could live without laws: “Love and do as you wish!” But, love, as he defined it in this context, meant the highest level of altruistic love. In other words, if you are already a saint you don’t need laws. Sadly, our world, our churches, and we ourselves, don’t measure up to that criterion. We still need laws to the extent that they bring us to the one great law that relativizes all others: Love God above all else and love your neighbor as yourself. We get into trouble when our adherence to a law does not bend or give acquiescence to that one great law.

Scripture is replete with stories of this truth. Consider for example the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Looking at the older brother of the prodigal son, on the surface his devotion to his father lacks nothing. He has kept all the commandments, has never left his father's house, and has done all the required work. Like most upright, religiously respectable people, he is put off by his father’s celebration for someone who most assuredly does not deserve it. The irony is that he fails to notice that he is not in fact inside his father's house. He is a slave and one who carefully obeys, but he has failed to understand the spirit of his father’s love. He hates his brother and is resentful of his father’s generosity because of bitterness and anger. His actions are correct, but his heart is wrong. We can be scrupulously faithful and still find ourselves standing outside of God's house and outside the circle of community and celebration because of a bitter heart. As St Paul reminds us, without love we are nothing. (1Cor13:2)

Like the older brother of the prodigal son, we can be doing everything right and still, somehow, be wrong. How can we offer the truth, the right answers, to those around us, if we are not acting with a heart full of love? If, inside of our speaking the truth, there are elements of elitism, arrogance, anger, lack of respect, lack of understanding, or worse still, embittered moralizing, our truth will not be heard, not because our truth is wrong but because our heart is.

Another poignant Parable is that of the Good Samaritan. In that story we see that the two persons who did not stop to help the man who was lying half-dead in the ditch did so for high reasons. The priest and scribe passed by and did not stop to help. Why? I am sure they felt sorry for the man. They probably even felt some guilt for leaving him. But guilt is not a substitute for responsibility. The parable does not say that they failed because they were hardened, mean, selfish, or lacking in morality. They did not stop, it tells us, precisely because of their religion and its rules about maintaining ritual purity. Their motives were religious. Whether moved in compassion or not, they left a dying man lying alone in a ditch. They had religious considerations that outweighed their call to love. They might have been a fine priest and scribe in the temple, but they were not good men out on the street where it counts. Then, in the eyes of the Jews, the “no good” Samaritan shows up. To the Jew, he is a mixed blood mongrel, one of the “losers,” a heretic, who denied much of the scriptures. Samaritan’s were outsiders banned from the temple. Their financial contributions were refused. Their testimony never excepted in a court of law. He however, free from the religious constraints of the priest and scribe, was able to follow his heart and let simple human compassion move him to reach through the distance that had been created by reputation, ethnicity, ideology, bad history, and religion. There was enough love in his heart to see that the face of the man lying in the ditch was the face of a brother, despite all that race, creed, and circumstance had placed between them.

We all need to let ourselves, especially as Catholics, be challenged by this. The challenge is not simply “Can’t we all just love each other?” The challenge of these parables is to look at all the things that, for religious reasons, block our basic compassion towards each other. The challenge is to look at how we use religion to rationalize our lack of fundamental charity and respect for each other, to block what charity asks of us.

This applies to both religious conservatives and liberals. Conservatives need to be careful that their legitimate concern for dogma, orthodoxy and morality, especially sexual morality does not get in the way of their charity. It is not that these things are not important; it is just that charity is more important.

Liberals need to be careful that their legitimate concern for liberal orthodoxy (political correctness) does not subvert a more primary religious demand, namely, to be charitable above all and to all. In the same way, with a passion for social justice, they need to guard against being selective in their charity, no matter how urgent the cause.

God’s presence in this world is all about charity and only a personal experience of unearned love ("grace") can move us into a religion beyond mere "requirements" to a religion of actual transformation; death and resurrection realized and lived.

In the end, when Jesus describes the Last Judgment, there is only one question. Not how much money did you make? Not how often was your name in the paper? Nothing about sexual sins, missing Mass or saying the rosary. The only question is this: I was hungry, I was thirsty, naked, in prison, lost, afraid. I was the one they called “slut,” “faggot,” and “loser”….What did you do for me?