Part 2: The Challenges of Individualism

Part 3: The Person, the Other, and the Community in communio Ecclesiology

Part 4: Affinity and Lifestyle Enclaves

Part 5: Communities of Memory

Part 6: The Parish and the Mission of the Laity

“Civic” Ministry

Having considered the role of the parish and the mission and responsibility proper to the laity, we can consider practical ways in which the principles of the public life can be fostered at the level of local parishes. We recall at this point our previous discussion of how the individualism that permeates American culture alienates the individual from the community to the point that he loses his sense of relatedness to others. The local parish can restore a sense of belonging among its members through many different ways. Initially, the parish should have small groups with different focuses (e.g. bible study groups, singles groups, married couples groups, book clubs). These are in addition to diverse ministries (e.g. catechesis, social justice ministry, liturgical ministry) that are assumed to be in place in most parishes. Also, the parish should have a structured series of social events such as socials, pot lucks, and festivals, just to name a few. These initial structures need to be in place because they allow parishioners to interact with one another in a casual way but also give them an opportunity to work together for a common goal as in the case of a children’s play or the organization of a festival. In addition, these structures are meant to provide a foundation upon which a “civic” ministry can be built, which I suggest next.

Empirically speaking, we can say that many Catholics who belong to their parishes do not actively participate in them beyond the Sunday Mass. There are a lot of socioeconomic and political concerns that naturally occupy the minds of the laity when they attend the weekly Mass, but despite the fact that the rest of the parishioners may share many of those same concerns, they nevertheless go unvoiced and unheard week after week, because nobody expects that the parish could be the place to discuss them. This contributes to a further alienation of parishioners from their parishes. Since their participation in their parishes is limited to Sunday Mass, some lay people may grow increasingly frustrated and disappointed with their parish community, because genuine concerns that affect their lives are never addressed. In such context, we should start envisioning the parish as a community of engagement and not of retreat,[1] which can be realized through the creation of a “civic” ministry.

In principle, the purpose of the civic ministry is to provide a space—a forum—within the parish in which parishioners can gather together, discuss, and actively work toward finding solutions to common problems that concern their community as well as other neighboring communities. It is also meant to serve as a training ground for parishioners to learn how to dialogue, listen, and resolve conflicts. The ministry can be subdivided into two groups or forums that will have two different focuses: distributive justice and commutative justice. The distributive justice group would focus on issues that are related to the allocation of income, wealth, and power in society[2] (e.g. poor allocation of resources in school districts). The commutative justice group would deal primarily with issues that pertain to “agreements and exchanges between individuals or private social groups”[3] (e.g. fair treatment of employees by employers). These two subgroups are only suggestions that allow enough flexibility for the parish to deal with different issues that may arise. The groups could also be named differently so that parishioners can have a better understanding of the purpose of each. In theory, the permanent members—or directors—of the civic ministry should be keenly aware of the problems that concern the parish community as well as neighboring communities. These issues would then be brought up in meetings where parishioners are invited to share their thoughts about them. If necessary, following meetings can serve to further discuss and decide on immediate and future action that needs to be taken.[4]

This civic ministry should not be conceived in isolation from existing ministries as if it were just as one option among many. Because of its nature, the civic ministry should draw from and feed back to all other ministries. For instance, permanent members of the civic ministry should be encouraged to be part of the liturgical ministry given the central role of the liturgy in the parish community. Similarly, these members can interact with the Religious Education group within the parish to coordinate sessions explaining Catholic social doctrine to the youth and adults alike. It is also important that, if possible, the civic ministry should work with other ministries and/or other parishes to organize weekend (silent) retreats and sessions that would focus on moral theology, Catholic social doctrine, and the teaching of skills that would help parishioners to dialogue and resolve conflicts effectively.[5] In addition, the civic ministry should be in constant dialogue with other parishes as well as with external organizations (e.g. The Metropolitan Organization in Houston) and the pertinent local authorities.

Concluding Remarks

The Second Vatican Council and the most recent papal encyclicals have made it clear that, because of their unique relation to the world, the laity have a responsibility to engage culture and to structure it according to the principles of the Gospel. The highly individualistic American culture poses enormous challenges to the task of evangelization, but if the efforts of individuals are joined together at the parish level, then the challenges may not be as insurmountable as we may be tempted to think. For the efforts at the parish level to be effective, however, there needs to be proper training and development of the laity in order to ensure that parishioners are well prepared to make an impact in the public square. Despite our best efforts, the results of our work may not always turn out quite as we expected. Thus, it is important that when we face obstacles in evangelizing, we remember the gift of hope that we have been given as well as the power of prayer, which is the “school of hope.”[6] And we must constantly recall the Lord’s promise that he will be with us always “until the end of the age” (Mt 28:20).

[2] United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All, 70.

[3] Ibid., 69.

[4] The program these meetings would have to follow is crucial to their success. To describe such program would be beyond the constraints of this paper. I suggest that the  meetings within this civic ministry should follow a the model developed by the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) that has proven to be successful.

[5] For more on the needs and principles of training of the laity for the apostolate and the roles of the clergy in such training, see Chapter VI of Apostolicam Actuositatem

[6] Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 32-34.

Part 2: The Challenges of Individualism

Part 3: The Person, the Other, and the Community in communio Ecclesiology

Part 4: Affinity and Lifestyle Enclaves

Part 5: Communities of Memory

The Parish and the Mission of the Laity

The Second Vatican Council recognized the important role of the parish in the context of the universal Church: “The parish offers an outstanding example of community apostolate, for it gathers into a unity all the human diversities that are found there and inserts them into the universality of the Church.”[1] With regard to the mission of the laity, the same document, the Decree on the Apostolate of Laity, highlights how the

laity should develop the habit of working in the parish in close union with their priests, of bringing before the ecclesial community their own problems, world problems, and questions regarding man’s salvation, to examine them together and to solve them by general discussion.[2]

As mentioned previously, in light of communio ecclesiology, the Church has a wholesome and comprehensive view of the person in which all of his dimensions—physical and spiritual—are taken into account including his worldly activities. Thus, it should not be a cause for surprise to suggest, as the Decree above notes, that the parish should be a forum, a place where lay people should bring to their community their “world problems” and discuss them and resolve them together. This concept may still be surprising nonetheless to most Catholics. We are used to thinking of parishes as the place where we worship and not where we discuss “worldly” affairs. The underlying problem is our definition of worship. We seem to create a false dichotomy between worship and action when in reality if we were to live our lives as God meant for us to live them every one of our actions would become our “spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1).

More recently, John Paul II emphasized the importance of action on the part of the laity that is driven by solidarity as “a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.”[3] Thus, as lay Catholics especially, due to our unique place within the world, it is not enough for us to merely feel compassion for others and their misfortunes. We have to act and commit ourselves to improving the conditions of our neighbors, because we are responsible for the well being of all—without exception. To act in this way is not an option but a logical consequence of our Christian faith. Furthermore, Pope Benedict XVI in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, also outlined the mission of the laity “to configure social life correctly, respecting its legitimate autonomy and cooperating with other citizens according to their respective competences and fulfilling their own responsibility.”[4] Once again, there is a responsibility to engage the world that is proper to the lay faithful and that has to be done through cooperation with fellow citizens and not through isolated efforts of individuals.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 38.

[4] Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 29.

Part 2: The Challenges of Individualism

Part 3: The Person, the Other, and the Community in communio Ecclesiology

Part 4: Affinity and Lifestyle Enclaves

Communities of Memory

Bellah directly contrasts lifestyle enclaves with communities of memory, which he defines as those communities that do not forget their past. A community of memory is involved in “retelling its story, its constitutive narrative, and in so doing, it offers examples of the men and women who have embodied and exemplified the meaning of the community.”[1] As a community of memory, the Church retells the story of our faith when we celebrate the memorial of the Lord’s sacrifice: “Do this in memory of me” (Lk 22:19). Throughout the liturgical year, the Church also remembers the examples of the saints who throughout the centuries have unwaveringly chosen to follow Christ. Thus, it is through the liturgy (literally meaning “the people’s work”) that the Church remains a community of memory. In the liturgy, the People of God participate in the work of God.[2] It is not as individuals that we come to participate in the work of God, but as a people gathered together in communion. While lifestyle enclaves rely mainly on affinity to preserve their existence, communities of memory are held together by much stronger bonds. Members of genuine communities share much more than interests: they have in common their history as a people that constitutes their identity. Therefore, they are not afraid of possible differences in qualities or dissimilarities in views as long as they do not diametrically oppose the core bonds that hold them together. Diversity does not pose a problem for these communities either, because the common goal and foundational principles that bind the members together give them meaning and clarity of purpose. Similarly, a diversity of languages was not a problem for the nascent Christian church. After receiving the Holy Spirit, the apostles started speaking in different tongues and all who heard them were able to distinguish their own native language (Acts 2:3-11). The apostles were speaking many different languages, but they were still able to preach the good news because of the one Holy Spirit that bound them together.

Communities of memory are constituted by a wide array of stories of men and women that provide us with a window to the world that is much wider and much richer than the narrow and impoverished window lifestyle enclaves offers us. In a community that knows, remembers, and relives its history, our sense of awareness and relatedness expands. Our life also acquires more meaning, because we begin to understand how we fit into the whole community. In this context, the Church as a genuine community of memory can help us in forming and renewing our Christian identity, because we can understand ourselves as part of a centuries-long story of a people that holds a common belief and goal. In establishing our identity within the Church we also discover the truth about God, about ourselves, and about the world. To know these truths is of utmost importance, because as the late Pope John Paul II wrote, God has

assigned us a particular mission: to accomplish the truth about ourselves and about the world. We must be guided by the truth about ourselves, so as to be able to structure the visible world according to truth, correctly using it to serve our purposes, without abusing it. In other words, this twofold truth about the world and about ourselves provides the basis for every intervention by us upon creation.[3]

In unveiling these truths, we understand how they differ from the parallel “truths” that govern American culture, which then allows us to directly address their limitations and shortcomings and supplement them with the principles of the Gospel.

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1069

[3] Pope John Paul II, Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millenium (New York: Rizzoli, 2005), 81.

Part 2: The Challenges of Individualism

Part 3: The Person, the Other, and the Community in communio Ecclesiology

Affinity and Lifestyle Enclaves

Although American culture is highly individualistic and its emphasis can be quite overpowering, the human tendency toward relationships is still present. Americans across the country still gather in small groups around the country: voluntary associations, country clubs, bowling leagues, church groups, sewing clubs, just to name a few. However, it is necessary to make the distinction between superficial and genuine communities, which Bellah calls lifestyle enclaves and communities of memory, respectively. Bellah notes that lifestyle, as opposed to community, is “fundamentally segmental and celebrates the narcissism of similarity.”[1] Lifestyle enclaves, then, are self-contained groups in which only those with similar tastes and interests gather together. Lifestyle enclaves are sectarian. Due to their heavy reliance on affinity, they tend to create boundaries and fences, where those outside of the group who are dissimilar or different are unwelcomed. They fragment and limit the person, because they offer a narrow view of the world: the only one that is shared in common. Lifestyle enclaves impoverish relationships rather than enrich them. Any attempt on the part of the members to share other skills or values that may contradict or not completely align with the interests of the enclave can be considered a cause for conflict and division. The members of lifestyle enclaves do not enrich one another; they maintain a monologue among each other rather than a dialogue with outsiders. Thus, the search for our selves and for our identity as Christians within the American culture becomes fruitless in these lifestyle enclaves, because these groups do not offer us a window to the world through which we can understand how we fit in it as individuals and as a group. Instead, they are merely a mirror that reflects an image that we have invented or that we have allowed society to create for us.

Lifestyle enclaves thrive and owe their subsistence to the affinity that exists among their members. In California, the mega-church Saddleback Church relies greatly on small groups to make its members feel more of a part of the larger congregation. The small groups are formed through what they call “small-group connection sessions.” In these sessions, “people sit in sections of the hall that correspond to where they live and briefly tell one another about themselves” with a one-minute limit. At the end of the session, people are able to connect with small groups. One of the pastors admits that it is affinity that allows these groups to remain together beyond the curriculums they cover.[2] Whereas Saddleback Church intentionally relies on affinity among members to create and keep these small groups together, the All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena intentionally brings dissimilar people together in small groups in order to “reflect its belief in inclusiveness and the essential oneness of all people.”[3] However, the small groups in the All Saints Church do not stay together after finishing their curriculums as often as they do in Saddleback. Hence, as Putnam concludes, “affinity is a more powerful glue than diversity.”[4] It is not diversity that can be blamed for the disbandment of some of the small groups at All Saints once they cover their curriculums. The problem is that diversity cannot exist for its own sake. Diversity needs to be coupled with a common goal that can bring the members together; otherwise, the group is really artificial—it becomes ambiguous and meaningless.[5] In both of these examples, nonetheless, we can see that weak bonds hold these groups together: one is bound by affinity and the other by a superficial diversity.

Individualism provides the proper ground for lifestyle enclaves to exist. Individuals who are mainly concerned with their private lives only relate to those who have matching tastes and interests, because they do not represent a potential cause for disturbance to the fenced life they protect so much. It is no surprise that the individualism—along with the springing up of lifestyle enclaves—that permeates American culture has made some headway into Christianity, as the previous examples show, and even into Catholicism. Increasingly, Catholics are commuting longer distances to the parishes of their choice, because of personal preferences, rather than attending the parish that is closest to them making these parishes are “enclaves of the like minded” that “cease to school us in getting along with others amid disagreement.”[6]

Lifestyle enclaves are fragile, built on sand, where any sign of dissimilarity can be fatal to their survival. In contrast to this approach to forming groups, we need communities with stronger foundations that can help us construct a coherent story of who we are as a people (not as individuals). This way we can form an authentic—not an artificial and superficial—image of ourselves as Christians in the American culture.

Part 5: Communities of Memory

[2] Robert Putnam and Lewis Feldstein, Better Together: Restoring the American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 130.

[3] Ibid., 136-137.

[4] Ibid., 137.

[5] Members of this church actually boast of the “ambiguity” that exists in their community as being more “than a lot of people can tolerate” elsewhere. For more similar views of the members of this church. See Putnam and  Feldstein, Better Together, 140.

[6] Vincent Miller, “Culture of Choice Creating Religious Enclaves,” 3 March 2008, 26 April 2009 <http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/03/culture_of_choice.html>.

Part 2: The Challenges of Individualism

The Person, the Other, and the Community in communio Ecclesiology

In order to overcome the limitations individualism imposes on us as Catholics, we need to understand how the Church views the person (as opposed to the individual), the other (our neighbor), and the community in the context of communio ecclesiology. The Incarnation makes Christianity so distinct from other major religions, because it follows that the Christian who is searching for God encounters Him in another person: Jesus Christ. Therefore, the encounter between the individual and God in Christianity is a personal encounter, because the Christian is faced with someone concrete and familiar: a God who shares his or her same human nature. The Incarnation has given the meeting between humans and God a personal character. This understanding of the person is quite different from the understanding of the individual that takes place in the American culture as sketched above. Joseph Ratzinger summarizes well this different perspective on the individual when he writes that:

Christian faith is not based on the atomized individual but comes from the knowledge that there is no such thing as the mere individual, that on the contrary man is himself only when he is fitted into the whole: into mankind, history, the cosmos.[1]

Communio ecclesiology pays homage to the whole person in his physical and spiritual being and worldly activities.[2] This holistic approach to the individual views the individual as a person who is in the world and in communion with others. Communio theology sees the person in harmony with the world and others rather than in opposition to them, which is in direct contrast to how Locke conceived the individual who only joins together with the community when driven by his self-interests.

Augustine maintains that by nature, the human person is a social being and finds himself living in the world that is made up of human and divine realities.[3] The Incarnation—the Word made flesh and dwelling among us—stands as a proof that it is in the world where God carries out his divine plan that, as Jean Daniélou rightly notes, “the entire world is the accomplishment of the plan that comes from God and is moving toward God.”[4] Thus, we do not enter the world of meaning by ourselves as disjointed individuals with no relation to one another as each having our own “independent little world.”[5] On the contrary, we enter it together as a people made in the image of God:

the image of the Word, which the incarnate Word restores and gives back its glory, is “I myself”; it is also the other, every other.  It is that aspect of me in which I coincide with every other man, it is the hallmark of our common origin and the summons to our common destiny.  It is our very unity in God.[6]

When we are in authentic communion with one another we realize how different others are from us and that can cause us to either fear the other to the point that the differences between us become divisive[7] or to realize that we “cannot be without the other” despite our differences, just as in the Trinity the Father cannot be without the Son or the Spirit, and vice versa.[8] It is this latter understanding of community—the divine fellowship that exists within the Trinity—that stands as the model of an ideal community of faith in communio ecclesiology.

Part 4: Affinity and Lifestyle Enclaves

[2] David L. Schindler, Heart of the world, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1996), 28.

[3] Augustine of Hippo, St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality, ed. Elizabeth Clark (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 43.

[4] Jean Daniélou, Prayer: The Mission of the Church (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1996), 9.

[5] Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard and Sister Elizabeth Englund, OCD (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 335.

[6] De Lubac, Catholicism, 340.

[7] John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness (New York: Continuum, 2006), 2.

[8] Ibid., 9.

The Challenge of Individualism

We are Catholics, but we are Americans at the same time. It is an illusion to think that we can live our lives as “good” Catholics while being isolated from the larger American society. Inevitably, if we are to engage American culture, we have to confront and understand the essential aspects of how Americans view themselves, their neighbors, and the world around them.

Since the birth of our nation, as seen in the founding documents, the understanding of the individual has been essentially Lockean[1] in that the individual is defined prior to society. On this view, society becomes subservient to the individual rather than the individual forming part of a larger whole and contributing to the good of the whole. According to Locke, the only reason why men should join together in forming a society is to ensure the preservation of their individual rights. It is this emphasis on the individual that brings about the individualism that pervades the American consciousness and inescapably shapes our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors. We can see how individualism manifests itself in how we are, for the most part, concerned primarily with our private lives: our individual material success, physical well-being, and safety. We tend to either subtly ignore or leave social, economic, or political concerns to politicians if such issues do not have a direct and immanently negative effect on our private lives. In the case that there is a public concern that directly clashes with our private values, we take action, but it is limited to voting. In doing so, we hope that the vote by itself will somehow translate into the result we desire. Rarely we find ourselves gathering with fellow neighbors or parishioners to discuss matters that affect our community or other neighboring communities.

In America, the individual, alienated from its greater social context, has become the center of gravity, so to speak, the beginning and the end. The self-centered individual, rather than the community, is the basic cell of American society. The overemphasis on the individual that reigns in our culture has led individuals to mark their own physical, natural and spiritual spaces or territories—to build fences around themselves to keep away those who are not directly contributing to their happiness or immediate satisfaction of some sort. In this context, the challenge for Catholics in America who are trying to weave the message of the Gospel into the fiber of American society is enormous. Jesus said to his apostles that his disciples would be known by their love to one another (Jn 13:34). But how are we going to love one another deeply and sincerely when we find ourselves in a culture that only tells us to love ourselves? Loving our neighbor requires a complete self-emptying—a change of focus from oneself to the other. Dostoevsky, through his character Ivan Karamazov, rightly understood the challenge of this commandment when he observed that “One can love one’s neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it’s almost impossible.”[2] In the abstract, we romanticize and idealize love, an understanding that has been fueled by our individualistic culture. However, “at close quarters” we realize that love is challenging: that we have differences of views, which may lead to conflicts. These challenges that naturally arise in our relationships with our neighbors—spouses, children, family members, parishioners, friends, coworkers, or even strangers—can discourage us and prevent us from maintaining a dialogue and from trying to reach a consensus.

In our self-contained lives, our sense of relatedness has broken down. We have difficulty identifying who is our neighbor. It is no longer natural for us to care for others, not because we simply do not care, but rather because we feel inadequate to do so—we have left the task of caring to professionals.[3] For Catholics, performing the corporal works of mercy, which stand at the heart of Christian action and constitute the life of service of the Church, have become almost an afterthought—something we, as lay people, are not capable of doing due to lack of professional training. We learn from individualism that if Catholics are to properly and effectively participate in public life, they cannot embark on such process by themselves as isolated individuals. To enter the public sphere, we must first know ourselves and we can only discover who we are through our relationships with others.

Part 3: The Person, the Other, and the Community in communio Ecclesiology

[2] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004), 220.

[3] See Parker J. Palmer, The Company of Strangers (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 98.

I will be posting my final paper here in May. Please feel free to share your thoughts! Thanks in advance!

“Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste, and no town or house divided against itself will stand.” (Mt 12:25)

I haven’t posted as much in recent times, because many things have happened in our lives in the past few months: Policraticus and I happened to get married in the middle of a hurricane, I have been on extensive business travel, working on a Masters part-time, trying to publish a paper and I honestly got burned out from the Catholic blogosphere during the election cycle. The latter got to the point that it was hurting my spiritual life and my hope in decent and charitable dialogue with other Catholics.

That being said, I am not going to have time to write posts and read comments extensively until probably June when I finish my Masters, but I can somewhat follow the discussion that went on in my post regarding Cardinal DiNardo’s response to the Notre Dame “incident”, so to speak. I rejoice every time that a bishop defends the dignity of every person. I rejoice that our own Cardinal DiNardo has chosen to be outspoken about Notre Dame inviting President Obama and granting him an honorary law degree. I rejoice every time that our bishops speak sternly about the sins against undocumented migrants. I lament, on the other hand,  when they are not as outspoken about torture and war. However, I will not fall into the trap of not rejoicing when a bishop speaks strongly about abortion and not about, say, health care or war. A pronouncement that defends life at any of its stages is always welcomed and a reason for rejoicing. I will not fall into the same trap that conservatives sometimes fall into when Democrats make a move that protect life and cannot recognize it as a victory for the pro-life cause, regardless of how small it may be. Liberals make the same mistake when they cannot come around to recognizing that, for example, former President Bush also happened to do things that ultimately helped the pro-life cause. Yes, he led an immoral war. He also allowed torture. That should make us, as Catholics, take things that either conservatives and liberals do with a grain of salt, but at this point, any small victory we can have in the pro-life cause should be a cause for rejoicing.

This country is not Catholic. The language that dominates the public sphere in this country is not Catholic; not even Christian. It is the language of the Enlightenment: a Lockean language of individualism that defines the individual prior to society. We need to wake up to this reality and stop naively thinking that the American culture that embraces abortion is somehow different from the American culture where virtue can be found: hard workers and people of good will who want to serve and help others. Liberals and conservatives, in the political sphere, differ only in the way that they interpret the individualism upon which this nation was founded.  The former advocates, for example, the individual right to privacy while the latter focuses on, say, right to gun ownership.

Our friends at the Creative Minority Report recently flattered us by making us part of their March Madness brackets where they had us in the “Top 64 People Destroying Our Culture.” (Unfortunately, I heard we only made it to the Elite Eight.) I am assuming they meant American culture, but who knows? I wonder if they even know what they mean by culture or how they define culture. I don’t think they do. It is flattering, nonetheless, because as a member of Vox Nova, I am all for destroying the culture of death, consumerism, and individualism that pervades the American consciousness.

Folks, whether we like it or not, the dominant American culture is not Catholic. It is even far from thinking in line with Christian principles. What are we going to do about it? At this point, I will take any small victory I can take. I will take any pronouncement from the Magisterium that speaks for human life even if it doesn’t happen to satisfy my “personal expectations”. I will also take any move that protects the unborn from politicians with whom I disagree on those same life issues. In a culture that is not Catholic, I think we should rejoice in the small victories and keep fighting behind the scenes to make the Catholic voice louder than the individualistic voice. But we can’t do that if we keep yelling at each other.

Introduction

When we look at America today as a people of faith, we often find ourselves overwhelmed wondering how it is that we have come the point where we are today. We witness an increasing number of divorces, single-parent families, cohabiting couples, premarital sexual relations among young people, and a nation divided by issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, torture, and the definition of the institution of marriage in our society. All these issues are in addition to chronic consumerism and a growing economic gap between the rich and the poor. Christians are called to make the Gospel message known to all, but with such bleak circumstances and a culture that often seems ambivalent to Christianity and religion altogether, the prospects of successfully transforming the world with the saving love of Christ do not look too promising. Christians of all ages have lived through difficult times and even hostile communities. But history tells us of Christians who, because of their steady faith, incessant hope, and self-giving love, proved successful in the long term. For example, even in the midst of the frustration that is palpable in several of St. Paul’s letters, he nevertheless pleads incessantly with the people of Corinth so that they may leave their old immoral ways behind and act according to the Gospel. Or in the middle of Roman persecution, Justin Martyr still appeals to the Roman Emperor saying that Christians were his “allies in promoting peace.” [1] Their success, moreover, can also be attributed to how well they knew their audience—their values, problems, and concerns—because that knowledge made them more effective evangelists. It is in the example of these men and women that has left such an imprint in the secular world—the imprint of Christ—and the Church that we should ultimately look up to so we can do the same in America.

For the most part, American cultural trends and general patterns of behavior go unquestioned, or at least unexamined, as if they were simply an inescapable plethora of different expressions of our core identity as Americans. But what exactly is the American identity? What are its roots? And if such cultural trends are just unavoidable consequences of our identity, how are we as Catholics going to weave the message of the Gospel into the fiber of American society? In an attempt to answer these questions, as mentioned above, it is imperative for us to do what apologists like Paul and Justin did in their own time: learn our audience. We need to first learn and define the roots of the core values that make up American culture.

Culture and Myth

First, let us define the term “culture.” Culture is a way of life held in common by a group of people in which they share a window that gives them a vision of God, the world, and the human person. But cultures are human constructs that are based on an underlying myth that contains a humanly created view of the world. These myths are human attempts to understand the truth about God, the world, and human beings. As man-made structures, they contain inherent limitations and distortions. Thus, they reveal glimpses of truth, but also conceal fundamental aspects of that same truth. If all cultures are governed by their respective myths, then what is the myth that makes up American culture?

Roots of the American Myth

American order, Russell Kirk rightly states, “was not founded upon ideology,” nor was it manufactured. Rather it grew from the influence of many cultural strands. [2] From the Law and the Prophets, the first American settlers learned about the notion of a covenant. From the Greeks, the Founding Fathers learned the struggles associated with building a healthy society. From the Romans, they received their articulation of natural law, the concept of a republic, and the virtue of separation of powers. From England and the Enlightenment, they acquired their concepts of individual rights and common law. The founding documents of America, namely the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, synthesize in themselves these influences. If we wish to definitively identify the American myth of origin, we need to go back to the Declaration of Independence that contains the presumptions upon which the country was founded.

In the first few lines of this document we can find a consensus among the American founders with regard to the following beliefs: 1) the existence of a God; 2) natural law as the foundation that binds the nation together; 3) a Lockean understanding of the human person that is highly individualistic; 4) a government that is based on the consent of the people. For the sake of brevity, my focus for understanding American culture and its myth of origin will be narrowed primarily to the influence of Locke’s ideas on the American consciousness and their lasting impact in how we articulate the concept of the self.

John Locke and the Individual Rights ethos

A close study of John Locke’s influence on the Founding Fathers and ultimately the resurgence of his ideas in the founding documents is appealing, but it would be too extensive of an undertaking for this paper. I will only point out briefly the tenets of John Locke’s political thought, especially his notions of individual rights and social cotract. However, it is worth pointing out that Locke’s individualism is not restricted to his political theory, but rather permeates his entire philosophical thought. For, indeed, even his epistemology takes as its starting point the internal investigation of the ideas of the knowing subject.

Locke believed that because there is a natural moral law that could be discovered through reason, man has natural rights to preserve himself, defend his life, as well as a right to his freedom and right of property.[3] In order to preserve these rights, it is in the best interest of the individual to form an organized society. The state, then, is a necessary evil, according to Locke. Its existence is not ideal, but it is only through a judicial system that is recognized by all that the protection of individual rights can be guaranteed.[4] The only reason why men should join together in forming a society, according to Locke, is to ensure the preservation of their individual rights. Conceptually, in Locke’s view, the individual is defined prior to society to the extent that the latter becomes subservient to the individual rather than the individual being conceived as part of a larger whole and contributing to the good of the whole. This ethos of individual rights stands in contrast to the classical natural law tradition that has a more organic view of society. However, as Brian Bix points out, even a natural law theorist like Aquinas “still refers to individual rights—for example, to choose a vocation, to choose whether and whom to marry, and whether to subscribe to a particular religious faith.” [5] However, the specific examples of “individual rights” that Aquinas refers to do not isolate the individual from society in the way that the natural rights tradition does.

A proper understanding of the individual rights ethos to which Locke subscribed helps us grasp the roots of the American myth that constitutes the American identity I referenced above. Thus, it would be fair to say that the American myth of origin is essentially Lockean [6] and fundamentally about the individual. It is the notion of the highly independent individual that “obscures personal reality, social reality, and particularly the moral reality that links the person and society.” [7] Without a cultural tradition or social institutions to serve as references for understanding what is “good” or “right,” the individual only has himself to serve as the moral compass, which leads even further to a denial of objective morality because the individual now stands as the ultimate arbiter of his own decisions and actions.

Consequences of the Individual Rights ethos

On a more concrete level, I would like to use three examples that describe how this ethos manifests itself in issues that are familiar to most Americans: abortion, lust, and consumerism. [8] Abortion was defined as constitutional in the United States on grounds that it protected a woman’s natural right to privacy. This can only be possible in a society and a legislative and judicial system that places the individual as the beginning and the end—as the “center of action” and of obligation, which leads him to disregard others completely, in this case, the life of the unborn baby. Another example can be seen in the growing promiscuity among young people and even among adults that seems to be mainly driven by the endless search for pleasure. When the individual becomes his own judge and his actions are solely directed on the basis of his own interests, he does not see any need in establishing a fruitful relationship with the other if there is no immediate benefit for him. As a result, he disregards the other and searches endlessly and aimlessly for “others” until his desires are (supposedly) fulfilled. We can observe a similar pattern of behavior in consumerism. As William Cavanaugh rightly points out: “Consumer culture is not attachment to things but detachment. People do not hoard money; they spend it. People do not cling to things; they discard them and buy other things.” [9] When the individual has no moral compass that in the past was provided by tradition and social institutions, he inevitably conforms to the reigning societal trends; in this case, he sets levels of income and consumption as his own standards of behavior. Here lies one of the main ambiguities of American individualism: While the individual thinks that he is truly free when he frees himself from the restricting fetters of tradition, he is in reality conforming to the fetters of arbitrary mainstream social and cultural trends.

Conclusion

Individualism is entrenched in the American consciousness because it is part of the history of who we are as a people. As Bellah argues, we cannot escape individualism, because that would “mean for us to abandon our deepest identity.” [10] If that is the case, how can individualism be put to work toward the common good? If, as we have seen, the individual rights ethos stands as the American myth, then Christianity can fully uncover the truths that are concealed by this myth given its human origins and ultimately complement its views of God, human beings, and the world. The Christian faith can make these truths known to man, because God Himself, through the Incarnation, has revealed them to the Church. The question is how can we concretely—at the parish and local community levels—make these truths known to those who already believe but also to those who do not yet believe? My hope is to answer this question, at least in part, toward the end of the course.

“We [the authors] believe that much of the thinking about the self of educated Americans, thinking that has become almost hegemonic in our universities and much of the middle class, is based on inadequate social science, impoverished philosophy, and vacuous theology. There are truths we do not see when we adopt the language of radical individualism. We find ourselves not independently of other people and institutions but rather through them. We never get to the bottom of our selves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love, and learning. All of our activity goes on in relationships, groups, associations, and communities ordered by institutional structures and interpreted by cultural patterns of meaning. Our individualism is itself one such pattern. And the positive side of our individualism, our sense of the dignity, worth, and moral autonomy of the individual, is dependent in thousand ways on a social, cultural, and institutional context that keeps us afloat even when we cannot very well describe it. [...] We are not simply ends in ourselves, either as individuals or as a society. We are parts of a larger whole that we can neither forget nor imagine in our own image without paying a high price. If we are not to have a self that hangs in the void, slowly twisting in the wind, these are issues we cannot ignore.”

Emphasis added.

Bellah, Robert, et al. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 84.

(My husband showed me this book in a half-price bookstore a couple of years ago and after reading it my life has never been the same. This book introduced me to the Catholic Worker movement, which I barely knew beforehand. It now stands as the first of many books I have read about the movement and the cause for many long conversations between my husband and I about how we understand and try to live out our faith. Since reading the book, we have had the pleasure to meet the authors, Mark and Louise Zwick, founders of the Houston Catholic Worker [Casa Juan Diego] and who day after day, without a break, perform the corporal works of mercy that Day and Maurin emphasized so much.)

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin Misunderstood

Known by many only as a secular activist or as a Communist by her strongest opponents, Dorothy Day was far from being either one. In fact, during their lifetime, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, the founders of the Catholic Worker Movement, fiercely opposed Communism, because its ideologies hurt the dignity of the human person and did not uphold the inalienable rights of all human beings that they strongly fought for. They did not like to be called conservatives or liberals, as they believed that the values that they stood up for were simply Catholic, and therefore, true. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, were and are still considered as radicals, which they did not mind, because to them Radicalism “meant getting down to the roots.”

Many know about her abortion or her participation in radical secular movements, but only few know about her devotion to the saints, daily Mass, and the Divine Office. Dorothy explains how she explained to communists her conversion to Catholicism:

“I had a conversation with John Spivak, the Communist writer, a few years ago and he said to me, ‘How can you believe? How can you believe in the Immaculate Conception, in the Virgin birth, in the Ressurection?’ I could only say that I believe in the Roman Catholic Church and all She teaches.I have accepted her authority with my whole heart.”

Mission Statement of the Catholic Worker Movement

The Catholic Worker Movement did not have a complex statement of purpose. In fact, their mission statement can be summarized by the passage of the “Separation of the Goats and the Sheep” in Matthew 25:31-46. Dorothy and Peter as well as all Catholic workers today remind everyone that what we don’t do for the most vulnerable, we don’t do for our Lord: “what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.” (Mt 25:45). Hence, the works and deeds of the Catholic workers are centered on the Spiritual Works of Mercy and also the defense of life at all of its stages in order to demand a restoration of the social order with an ethic and economics that ensure the common good.

Monasticism in the Catholic Worker Movement

Dorothy and Peter were very familiar with the early Church Fathers, especially the Desert Fathers. Peter was especially familiar with the influence that monasticism had in Europe in restoring the social order during the Dark Ages. Hearing the call from Pius XI for a reconstruction of the social order at the time, Peter saw it necessary to return to the monastic way of life characterized by work, prayer, scholarship, and hospitality.

The Catholic worker houses were called Houses of Hospitality and the aim and purposes of these houses, according to Dorothy, were to

“…form a center of Catholic action in all fields, to work for, teach and preach social justice, to form a powerhouse of genuine spirituality and earnest educational and vocational work, to dignify and transform manual labor, and to work for the glory and love of God and His Church.”

Due to the monastic roots of the Catholic Worker’s vision, it made the movement’s aim a “way that is so old it looks like new.” Similar to the monastery structure, Peter and Dorothy tried to implement schedules at the Houses of Hospitality, but due to the nature of their service to the poor, sometimes they were not strictly followed. Their usual schedule looked (and still looks) like this:

5-7 Work in the Fields
7-9 Mass
9-10 Breakfast
10-11 Lecture or Discussion
11-2 Rest or Study
2-3 Lecture or Discussion
3-4 Cold Lunch
4-5 Lesson in Handicraft
5-8 Work in the Field
8-9 Dinner
9-5 Sleep

Spiritual Roots: Imitation of saints, not just mere admiration