My life is one surrounded and inundated with religion. The
words spoken around me, the symbols that adorn my walls, the texts that I read
for both my own edification and my professional life – they all scream
religion, religion, and more religion.
Religious beliefs, and all beliefs for that matter, are
grounded in some authority, some tradition that has been handed over to us.
Even non-believers have faith, in something, and that something has also been
handed over. Every concept, every ideology, every interpretation about the
meaning of things has been formed from the preexisting artifacts that inform and form our cultures. These artifacts are our various authorities giving definition to
the meanings of our worlds.
Many religious people are under the impression that their
explicit beliefs derive from a divine origin. Religious institutions are there
to assure such divine foundations. They have been commissioned to protect and
propagate these divine verities.
But when it comes to faith – not beliefs; faith and belief
are not always equivalent – one wonders what a religious person is placing
his/her faith in. Is it in the original charism that inspired the institution,
or is it the institution itself that assures the believer of the veracity of
his or her beliefs?
All institutions arise from something beyond themselves;
they are not sui generis. The raison d'etre of an institution is to
maintain and propagate the original inspiration, the original charism. This is usually
a person, or the ideas of a person. The purpose of the institution is to point
to, to be a visible sign of, the original idea or charism. But in many, if not most cases, the
institution takes on a life of its own, and sometimes even deviates from the
original idea or charism, and comes to believe in its own intrinsic value, turning
its attention towards its own perpetuation, defending against threats to its
own vitality and existence – propagating its own message and charism. When this
happens, faith is no longer grounded in the original idea or charism, but in the perpetuation of and the
vitality of the institution itself as an entity.
The heart of the Christian idea and charism is a human
encounter with the risen Christ. That is, with a person. It is not an encounter
with abstractions, with concepts, with an ideology. No doubt all relationships foster
ideas, concepts, even ideologies. But it is the person-to-person encounter that
is the foundation upon which the Christian grounds his/her faith – his/her trust,
love, loyalty, commitment. It is in the person, which means the whole person,
that this faith finds meaning. In his commissioning his apostles to carry on
and propagate his teachings he entrusted fallible and limited human beings with
the task of preaching the kingdom of God among other fallible and limited human
beings. This means that the seeds of the teachings of the God-man were planted
in very mixed soil. Soil filled with the good, the bad, the ugly, and the
indifferent. These fallible and sinful human beings passed this message onto to
other fallible creatures. And in the complexity of human cultural and social
history, this message has been mixed with a plethora of ideologies that were,
and are, contrary to the original message of the one who was without sin. Granted,
the task of uncovering the original intentions and meanings of the teachings of
Jesus can be, and continues to be a difficult and trying endeavor, it is utterly
necessary for every generation of Christians to pursue this vital undertaking.
All institutions are formed in the matrixes of human
culture. Accretions to the original message of Jesus have inevitably been incorporated
into the structures of the ecclesial institution. While this is absolutely
natural, the problem lies with the belief that the institution pristinely embodies
the unvarnished and unchanged message given by Christ two thousand years ago.
Faith in the utter and complete veracity of such an institution is not only naïve
but is also delusional. There are too many in the Roman Catholic church whose
faith has been grounded in the institution, even when the institution has not
always been faithful to the original charism. This misplaced faith is nothing
less than ecclesiolatry.
To question aspects of the institutions ‘traditions’ is
paramount to heresy for many who cannot distinguish the original charism with
the institution, the person of Jesus and the ecclesial structures that have
developed over the centuries, an institution whose very existence is to
maintain and propagate the original charism in language that is both true to
its intent and spoken in a way understandable in very different cultural and
social milieux.
Ecclesiolatry manifests itself every time someone damns
another to hell when the other does not slavishly accept every minute teaching
of the institution, an institution that, while being an instrument of the
Spirit, is still very human, with all the limitations that that implies. An
ecclesial institution that is not semper reformanda is one that has lost
its reason for being. Faith is not in an institution; it is in the one who inspired
the institution. Faith, for Christians, is in a person. It is in Jesus Christ,
who was and is the only infallible person to walk among us. None of us will
ever, in this lifetime, get it right, get his teachings, his charism, right. Let’s
just be honest and embrace this truth. But we cannot neglect the heart of his
teaching, the heart of who he was, is, and always will be – LOVE.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does
not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not
self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does
not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always
trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are
prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled;
where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
The question that I pose to every honest seeker: if the institution that has become a center for one's faith was suddenly seen in its naked reality, that is, in its all too human reality - a mixture of sin and grace - would one's faith be irrevocably shattered? Or will the profound experience with the lover of the universe, the one who loved creation into being, be enough to maintain one's commitment, trust, loyalty? If the latter is not possible because of the trust that has been given to the former, then we might be facing a case of ecclesiolatry.
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