Synopsis
Book by Novak Michael Novak Janna
Extrait
Chapter 1: Why Does Religion, Any Religion, Matter?
As at the entrance of the church on Sunday and on the feast days,
When we go to Mass,
Or at the funerals,
We give each other, we pass each other the holy water from hand to hand,
From neighbor to neighbor, one after the other,
Directly from hand to hand or from a blessed branch dipped into the holy water.
In order to make the sign of the cross either over ourselves, who are alive, or over the casket of the person who has died,
In such a way that the same sign of the cross is as if carried from neighbor to neighbor by the same water,
By the ministry, by the administering of the same water,
One after the other, over the same breasts and over the same hearts,
And the same foreheads too,
And even over the caskets of the same deceased bodies,
So from hand to hand, from finger to finger,
From fingertip to fingertip, the eternal generations,
Who are eternally going to Mass.
In the same breasts, in the same hearts up to the death of the world,
Like a relay,
In the same hope, the word of God is passed on.
-- Charles Péguy
(1873-1914)
JANA: For myself, and my generation as a whole (I believe), deciding to have faith, to believe in God, is not as hard to accept as it was for your generation. For this reason, Dad, I think we need to start at the concept of religion and then work backwards to God. I find making the leap from believer in God to practitioner of religion much harder. With my own experience, I realized this very quickly. After having spent many years not believing in anything or anyone, let alone some higher being that is all powerful and supremely good, the comfort that having faith in God provides was a welcome relief; at least someone out there is watching over you and caring what happens to you. Yet it is still possible to feel like something is missing, something concrete. Believing God is such a matter of faith that it would be nice to have something to touch, hear and smell. Logically, I would guess that something is religion. As in, "I've got religion." Well, I don't -- at least not right now. (Although I have very much enjoyed the times Mark, my boyfriend, has taken me to his Presbyterian Church with its very traditional minister and his wonderful, thick-as-molasses Scottish brogue.) Part of the reason I don't "have religion" is that I am not totally convinced that my lack of religion is the problem. Question one: Why is religion -- any religion -- important?
Organized religion superficially appears so contrived and so controlling. Its structure -- so bureaucratic with its layers of priests, ministers etc., and its large, imposing temples, cathedrals -- seems to physically reinforce the charge that religion works to put a greater distance between the individual and God, rather than to bring them closer. For example, organized religion often comes across like a gate keeper or bodyguard: unless one does this or bribes it with that on earth, it won't let you in, or recommend you, to see the celebrity that it's so possessively guarding -- that is, God. Psychologically, I have often felt this way -- that I could not hear God for the noise of his "bureaucrats."
I even wrote a poem years ago at a crisis point in my life when I wanted to turn to the church and to God, and yet felt alone and abandoned, like a little girl lost in the wide, cavernous darkness of an empty, cold cathedral.
Of course, I have always had hope -- hope that the alienation I felt from the church would be rectified when it awoke to its distance and tried to recapture its spirit.
I am still not completely clear about the purpose of religion per se. Question two: Why is it necessary to believe in a religion? Is religion just a means to an end? In other words, does religion merely act as a paved path to God (as opposed to forging through the jungle, perhaps even without a machete)? If so -- question three -- does the existence of many, many different religions only illustrate the variety of paths to God without specifying or implying that one is necessarily better than another -- that it is merely a matter of finding a good fit between you and the religion?
Finally, based on the fact that we are, after all, human and always want to know what's in it for us, my fourth question: What is religion supposed to offer or accomplish? Personal peace and fulfillment? I can understand that one certainly should not be asking for anything personal and superficial from God -- that would be audaciously presumptuous (although I do still turn to him and pray for assistance and favors anyway). But if one can believe in God without truly needing to believe in religion, then why bother believing in religion unless it offers you something?
DAD: Why, you ask, is religion, any religion, important? My simple answer is: Because it is true. If it isn't true, you shouldn't accept it. You wouldn't want to turn to religion merely for comfort, security, or peace of mind (although that's what atheists say religion is for). Because if religion isn't true, you wouldn't find peace of mind or comfort or security anyway.
Besides, if the religion you now accept isn't fully true, the longing for truth -- the longing to get reality right -- will drive you to pursue the evidence wherever it leads, however arduous that exploration (that "pilgrim's progress") may be.
If God is God, it cannot be impossible for him to have given us sufficient evidence to come to where he wants us to be. We have to took for it. That is the greatest detective story of all times. (All detective stories are parables for finding God.)
There is no other reason for counting yourself religious, except that it says something true about your place in the world.
There is no other purpose in joining a religious communion except that it is a communion bearing the truth about God, human destiny, and yourself. Keep your eye on the question of truth.
In some ways, a church or synagogue makes your way to God more difficult, not less. Every social institution is a clumsy thing. Some days, the preaching is not simply poor, but offensive. The music may be poor. (It may even be too beautiful: Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, says that paganism often begins just when the music soars -- just when your soul turns toward the bodily thrill of gorgeous sound. Music is lovely and good in itself, a gift of God, and yet it can quickly become a distraction from the presence of God. Kierkegaard believed in keeping first things first, with a fierce purity of purpose.)
A church group may be too cold and impersonal -- or too cozy, coy, and chummy. So I don't think a church "paves" your way to God; it may throw boulders in your path. I remember the English novelist Evelyn Waugh writing about the agonies he often endured attending public worship. Even some religious persons, left to themselves, prefer solitude and minimal involvement with others, especially institutions; they would prefer being hermits to enduring community.
In America especially, where "choice" reigns, many persons choose a congregation because they prefer its minister's preaching, the superior friendliness of its people, or the beauty of its worship services; or because they feel more "at home" in it than in some other. These are not unworthy motives. But neither are they religious motives.
To the extent that they are not rooted in conscience and a serious pursuit of the truth, such motives might be described as "social" motives, akin to those that might govern one's choice of a private club. Such motives eventually diminish the intellectual content of a religious body.
In fact, many American church groups might just as well join together as one religion of "the American way of life," a religion of gregarious sociality and individual choice. The basic commandments of this religion would be: Be open and friendly; give no offense; do the decent thing; be kind. As world history goes, these are not trifling virtues.
By contrast, just before his conversion from one Christian church to another, I have seen a grown man cry because he knew that he would miss his old friends at worship, and would feet ethnically and intellectually lonely in his new congregation. Yet conscience demanded that he go where truth is, not where for human reasons he preferred to go. Similarly, C. S. Lewis recounts how for years he felt uncomfortable in church. He went out of duty, because Christianity is a communal, public religion, not a solely private one. It is "the Body of Christ," a public organism as well as a fellowship of spirit. But for a long time, Lewis found churchgoing painful.
I hope you will forgive me, Jana, in stressing so much the pursuit of truth. Read, study, pray -- involve your whole soul (mind and will) in your decision. Do not make a religious choice for lighter reasons, even though, perhaps, most people do.
At least for Christians and Jews, religious faith is very heavily invested in the integrity (however wounded, however weak) of reason. For Christians and Jews it is an almost necessary presumption that there are truths to be discovered and known, that evidence matters, that reasoning is not in vain but attuned to the way things are, even though creation's secrets are far vaster than reason's repertoire.
Jews and Christians trust the instinct that humans were made to inquire, to understand, and to exercise judgment, since they were conceived and created by One who understands, chooses, and loves everything that he has created, enjoys the lot, cares for each detail of it. Pluck a tulip, a blade of grass, a bit of purple clover, and study the detail. It will repay study, everything will, everything is made with intelligence and care and love. Commit your life to intelligence; love your studies; devote yourself to science -- such love will never disappoint you. Realm beyond realm of sense will open itself before you. However far you go the Light has been there.
If I were an evangelical Christian, I might tell you here to think of your sins -- the deeds you are ashamed of, convicted by your own conscience -- and to recognize that Jesus by his death and resurrection offers you forgiveness. He is the only source of forgiveness, forgiveness to the depths of your soul, in the world. For myself, loving the Catholic tradition as I do, let me call your attention to the opening of the Gospel of St. John:
In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. All that came to be had life in him and that light was the light of men...
-- John 1:1-4, The Jerusalem Bible
I take this to mean that we learn about Jesus, the Word, in two places, first and most vividly in the gospels, but also in all the things that are made. All are made to reflect him. We can approach the whole of creation as another "book" about our Creator and Redeemer. This is the greatest detective story.
Jews and Christians trust the intuition that there is a Creator, not way back when, but now, holding in existence -- making the world stand out from nothingness (ex -- out from + sistere -- to stand), to be, to occur at all. It takes energy to raise concrete things out of nothingness and to hold them in existence for the appointed time; then they slide back into the nothingness. The First Cause, so to speak, is working all the time. We can feel each staccato second racing by, our life dissolving like the hill of sand in an hourglass, quickly, quickly. Yet here it is, Being (in the sense of existence) can almost be tasted. The wonder of it all is that there could have been nothingness. Instead the world came to be -- this is the first of wonders! Those who say that there are no miracles overlook existence. They who deny that there are miracles, they are the miracle, every bit as much as those who breathe thanks.
The first moment of religion begins in awe of truth, in fear of getting things wrong, missing the whole point, and wasting the precious and shining and rapidly filtering sands of existence.
All my life I have felt these sands slipping away. I remember distinctly -- I was fourteen, in the crowded stands of Notre Dame Stadium during a full in a game -- sensing the onrushing wind of death and realizing that I had to hurry, and pay attention. It was hard for me to believe that everybody else in the stands didn't hear the same wind, seemed actually to be aware only of the game below and of one another. I know today that the two mounds of sand of my own life are pretty uneven, and that we're getting awfully close to the last rush. (As my brother Jim said before he died last year, Novaks are not afraid of death; but we do have a sharp sense of how brief and precious life is.) The point is, I know from some of your own poetry and drawings that you have sensed the same thing, and what I want to underline is that fear; in this sense, fear of the Lord, and awe, and wonder, and eagerness to hear the call correctly, whatever it is. This is the beginning of true religion.
The reason why religion is important -- to repeat -- is that it's first of all about truth. Nothing that is lying or false, even if it is otherwise "nice," is worthy of creatures such as we have been made to be. Religious people don't promote study and build universities for nothing. Judaism and Christianity are (among others) "religions of the Book" -- a book to inquire into, to meditate on, to study, to put to the test of real-life practice. That should tell you something about the weight these religions put on seeking truth, in the light of evidence, especially the evidence of daily living.
You feel the pull of the evangelical Protestant denial that "religion" is a genus of which the gospel of Jesus is just one species. They insist (and so do Catholics) that Jesus is the Logos, the Word, in whom all things were made, and that he is the sole road to salvation. In this view, the other religions, however noble, miss the one crucial point: Jesus is the personal Savior of everyone. Evangelicals prefer, therefore, to talk of "faith" (faith in Jesus) rather than religion. You need to know that they are allergic to "religion in general."
This is true as far as it goes. Still, encouraged by the Catholic tradition, I like to think that "the Word in Whom and by Whom and through Whom were made all the things that are made" is partially revealed in all that is good and true in all human traditions. So when I write "religion," please see that I only want to include religious persons, like some of your friends who are not Christians or Jews, so that they and their parents can draw the appropriate comparisons to their own predicament in a secular age. All things human teach us to reflect on aspects of Him we might otherwise miss. This is one reason for terming the church "Catholic." Nil humanum mihi alienum: "Nothing human is alien to me," is an ancient Catholic conviction. The problem is to discern what, in all things, belongs to the Word.
Traditionally, therefore, we read the Jewish Testament as "prefiguring" the Christian, and study Judaism today to learn much about ourselves. (Correlatively, Jews have been much influenced in their self-understanding by interaction with the Christian world.) In a more remote way, the study of Islam and Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and the rest has been a rich source of insight for understanding (not only by way of contrast) the impact and range of our ...
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