Freedom, obedience and religious life

I don't think this is limited to Orthodox Catholicism. I can't begin to count the number of times I've discussed an issue with someone from some Protestant flavor only to have them say, "Well, my pastor says..." I really want to ask these people if they know anything about the Protestant Reformation, but I know they don't so I don't.

In plain English: the Legionnaires seem a typical coercive cult. Most coercive cults in the U.S. are Christianity-based. I had a several week, highly informative experience with the International Church of Christ, the Kip McKean folks (McKean is the nominal inventor of 'discipling'). What these former Legionnaires is practically identical to what people were doing in the ICC group I was invited into.

In the end, this speaks to the problem of authority in our culture. We cannot live without authority, in part because without authority, there is no stability. Yet we fear and resist authority, and not always out of self-centered rebellion. When I left Catholicism spiritually broken, I was grateful for Orthodoxy, but I knew that I could never again trust religious authority as uncritically as I once had done. Mind you, there's a difference between not recognizing legitimate authority, and not allowing oneself to be as devoted to serving those in the authority as others might be. I certainly recognize in principle the authority of the Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, once burned...

That rather sounds like Ex-Catholic Syndrome. I.e. using your unwilling liberty to search for a new master to obey, yet distrusting every particular master who presents himself.

A final thought: if we are all our own popes and patriarchs, though, and refuse to yield to any authority but our own autonomous judgment, how are we to know when we are abusing and misleading ourselves? We have all known people who thought they were taking the right way down a religious or moral path, but it was obvious to anyone with a lick of sense that they were self-deluded, and would come to ruin unless they listened to their priest, their pastor or someone with spiritual wisdom and authority. Maybe we've been that person. Maybe we might yet be.

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html

"Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts."

And who is your master, Jillian? Like the man sang, gotta serve somebody. If you say, "Me, myself and I," then on the basis of the positions you take on this blog, I can't say that I find the leadership all that reliable.

Burned. Yeah. You, me, both, Rod.

In the Orthodox tradition, if the priest or bishop betrays the faith, we the faithful are bound to stand and cry heresy.

If the traitor continues, he often ends with his ears boxed (think Athanasius and his orthodox gangs meeting the Arians in the streets of Alexandria) or (and I'm not endorsing this, but it's happened, more than once) garroted, and bobbing in the Bosporus.

Think St. Marc of Ephesus. I think of him, and St. John Fisher. Meditating on the two stories, their salient differences, is instructive, I think. Two bishops, defying the imperium/crown. For somehow similar, yet in the end essentially different reasons. Think of how their respective stories end..

St. Ignatius' line "if the magisterium/pope says black is white I'll accpet it" is absolutely horrifying, and I say profoundly heretical. But isn't it supremely ironic that the Jesuits have since gone on to produce Fancisco Suarez (and so many other casuists) and now the likes of Pedro Arrupe?

If you Orthodox would only finally get your hindquarters out of your heads. The Schism would be so over. I hope it happens, soon.

Anyhow, mark me, now as ever, yours,

the Anarcho- Traditionalist.

Oh, by the by, I have a history with the Legion, too. I dated a girl in Regnum Christi who taught at the school for consecrated women in Greenville, RI for a couple years; and have been on four vacation retreats with them.

Unlike Steve Skojec, I was told very emphatically that I do not have a vocation. This, the same month I was invited by my Dominican spiritual director to join the Order. Heh heh.

Back then, I called them blunted Jesuits. I think that moniker is apt. Their formation is superficially solid, but if you push at the surface the facade falls away pretty quickly. They're not very sophisticated, really.

I think I related this vignette once before on this blog, but I once asked two LC priests what they thought about the Mexican Revolution. They said they'd never studied it. I swear. It's true. And one of the guys was Mexican! This, from members of an order founded in Mexico in the 1940's!!

Unfreakin' believable, I say. And pretty dang pathetic.

God have mercy on Father Maciel, and his jacked up movement. There are a lot of good people there, whom he has betrayed.

Clarence Day quoted his father as saying, "When I get to Heaven I will be able to say that I did my praying on my own, without the aid of some collar-backwards cheerleader."

We need authority, especially of the spiritual kind, like we need lung cancer. It results in nothing but disaster when it is listened to and I can think of no one better than me, myself and I to listen to in such things. I am capable of making my own mistakes. I have no need to parrot the mistakes of others in the process.

I was just reading a book by Parker Palmer in which he discusses a quaker method of discernment, in which a group of trusted friends come together and ask questions of the person seeking guidance. They don't suggest any answers, just ask the questions. The way he described it, it seems very fruitful for helping people make their own decisions while still benefiting from the experience and wisdom of others.

Does anybody have experience with this?

Re: Quaker method of discernment--I think Pat is talking about the formation of a Clearness Committee. Although I am not a Quaker, I was once part of such a committee, back when I hung out with a lot of Friends. I was impressed with its workings. In general, Quaker operations are based on the presumption that G-d guides all of us in our individual consciences, but that the possibility of errors from individual interpretation of such guidance can be cancelled out or at least minimized by a BUNCH of individual consciences working together to discern the divine will in a particular case. It doesn't always work, and it is often terribly inefficient and slow and therefore irritating to high-energy types. But in the long run, it is less prone to disaster than a lot of the alternatives.

All this is to say that the grand FREEDOM VERSUS OBEDIENCE dichotomy is overdrawn.

I agree, Rosie. It seems to me a healthy person will yield to various authorities in different spheres of life, while also retaining fundamental freedoms.

So: I'll happily yield to the authority of traffic laws which tell me to stop at a red light; I'll follow my employer's reasonable dress code; I'll obey my Church's fast and abstinence requirements.

A deep, freely chosen commitment will require an even deeper yielding. If I join the service, for example, I yield my freedom to live where I choose.

But there are core freedoms it's never appropriate to yield to an external authority. I am fundamentally free to choose my own vocation, my own spouse, the concrete goods I want to pursue and realize in my life. These choices should be made prayerfully, with counsel from loved ones — but they are properly free, personal choices. Simply ceding the choice to an authority because you are afraid of being misled is deeply inhuman — and is similar to the foolish servant who buried his talent rather than risk investing it.

About two years ago a monk came to see me about an abusive and controlling abbot. He was torn between his vow of obedience and the psychological suffering he was experiencing. How to reconcile it?

Of course it could not be reconciled but neither could the vow of obedience (he was a monastic remember) be easily discounted.

How was it resolved? By understanding that obedience, in order to be meaningful, must be freely given. Lose the freedom, and all that remains is coercion. But God is not coercive. Does he make anyone believe? Does he make anyone obey? No. The abbot, the monk came to see, did not have the authority he claimed he held.

The monk understood that could leave and still be blessed with the favor of God. Once he grasped this, the psychological chains were broken, an in short order the abbot recognized the monk was no longer his. Fortunately, he was able to leave peaceably.

I am struck by Mr. Skojek's experience as contrasted with that of a young man I know who recently left his position as a numerary of Opus Dei. When he responded unenthusiastically to the announcement that it was time for him to take permanent vows, his superiors told him to rethink his position -- that if, after six years, he was not increasingly enthusiastic about what he was doing, then he should be doing something else.

I don't mean to suggest that Opus Dei is without flaws (c.f. Marie Banks above), but rather to give an instance of what ought to happen.