The Pathological Need For Certainty

Humans are meaning makers. Through the mystery of evolution there arose in hominization symbolic consciousness. Signs and symbols arise in such a consciousness, shaping a hermeneutics of meaning.

Charles Sanders Pierce noted that signs never have a definite meaning, as they are continuously qualified. Despite a common moniker, such as a traditional icon, word, or phrase, the meaning of the sign depends on the perceived referent in the mind and imagination of the individual, an individual living in the matrix of a particular social and cultural zeitgeist. Because of the appearance of sameness, e.g., the moniker Christ as a two-thousand-year-old symbol in Christian tradition, there is the illusion of a common meaning transcending time and space. How St. Peter understood the concept ‘Christ’ is the same as how I understand this concept – or so the illusion goes. An overly zealous attachment to such believing tends to result in a combative defensiveness when such a hermeneutics is challenged.

As social creatures, our meaning worlds are shaped in the context of various fields of play, to use Bourdieu’s sociological schema. In each of our fields (social and institutional relations) we inhabit and embody the worlds of meaning we observe and experience from the models in our social milieu. In Bourdieu’s schema, we incorporate into our consciousness the rules of the field of play. These worlds of meaning become habituated over time, forming our habitus – the embodiment of the symbols and metaphors that frame our interpreted experiences.

Humans are not only meaning makers, but in fact require meaning to be able to survive and flourish in the world. We need our meaning worlds to give us a sense of order. Disorder is vertiginous to our psychological and spiritual wellbeing. A stable and ordered meaning world increases a sense of security, a more stable and plausible foundation to stand on. Challenges to our meaning worlds, thus to our sense of security, is like an earthquake that causes us to realize, or to rage against, the fragility of our ideological constructs.

There is a ubiquitous belief that is found among many people in much of human history; the idea that there once was a golden age. In almost every era there are those who believe the present has strayed from a time in which one’s institutions, be they religious or otherwise, spoke and manifested the truth. For nineteenth century Catholicism that golden age was the 13^th century. It appears that there is a revival among a number of Catholic priests and theologians who long for this golden era, a time of comfortable stability, before the onslaught of modern psychology, sociology, and the other ‘ologies’ that have shaken the ‘solid’ foundations of certainty. This mythic golden age is believed to have attained the heights of an immutable truth and is celebrated in its gift of doctrinal stasis; a blessing that has been battered by a stultifying assault from human discovery, wonder, and mystery.

This meaning world shaping the habitus of many young priests is reinforced by a theological formation that seeks a recapitulation of a time in theological and institutional Catholicism that is as much a myth as those myths of origins that fundamentalists take as historical. This meaning world gives many young priests and theologians a sense of stability among a community in which the need to belong is satisfied, thus a form of groupthink impedes critical thinking, increasing the fear of questioning the paradigms claimed as capital T Truth. The desire for certainty is a compulsion, an addiction. It is pathological, and it results in tribalism, discontent with reality, a need for entrenchment, and need to scapegoat those who are believed to be the perpetrators of doctrinal and ecclesial betrayal. Faith is not certainty. It incorporates reason, and must be critical, but it is not certain. The need for certainty is the manifestation for the desire to be God. Thus, the desire, the compulsive need for certainty is idolatrous.