Saint Teresa of Avila: (1515 – 1582) the consequences of an alternative reality

Shema O Israel Adonai Elehenu Adonai Ehad  (God is one)

   Teresa of Avila is a well known Renaissance mystic who combined contemplation with action.  In the biblical sense she was both Martha and Mary. (Lk. 10 – 39-42) 

   Twentieth century philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, who is considered one of the first to champion women’s rights, complimented Teresa in her ground breaking book, The Second Sex.  Beauvoir noted that Teresa was able to integrate her sexuality with her spirituality.  Bernini’s Baroque statue in Rome is an example. 

   Her grandfather was of Jewish origin and forced to convert to Catholicism.  Her father remembered the humiliating process.  Such people were called ‘conversos.’   Spain expelled those of Muslim and Jewish Faith in 1492.

   Teresa of Avila was part of the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation. Her goal was to reform the Carmelite Order of both men and women whose practices had become lax and corrupt.  For a woman to take such a role was without precedent.  She founded several women’s convents as well as men’s priories in Spain. In doing so she clashed with Church and political officials.  She was a skillful negotiator as well as an astute business person.   Her method of prayer was direct contact with God and Jesus who guided her endeavors eliminating clerical intervention. Renaissance individualism segued to modern times.

   Teresa had public episodes of ecstasy.  Her confessors advised that Teresa chronicle her methods which became available for Church officials.  Despite such spirituality and openness Teresa was able to outmaneuver the Church’s Inquisition.    

   Teresa’s fame spread nationally and internationally. After her death in 1622 she was declared a saint.  She was named patroness of Franco’s Fascist forces in the Spanish Civil war.  Teresa competed with Santiago Matamoros to be patron Saint of Spain.  The Campostella shrine named after him is a world pilgrimage center in northern Spain. Santiago, St. James, according to legend, resurrected and fought against the Muslims.   Santiago Matamoros could be translated, “Jimmy the Muslim Killer.”  Teresa was named patroness of the “Raza.”  In 1970 she was declared a Doctor of the Church.

Artist:  Robert Lenz

   Saint Teresa of Avila’s endeavors were limited to the reform of the Carmelite Order and her personal relationship to her God.  Despite her brother’s role in the ‘conquista’ of the Americas, she seemed unaware of the horror brought about by Spain in their quest for gold and economic hegemony.  She did not know the indigenous people of the Americas, but she did know of them.                                        

   Dominican Friars from Salamanca, Spain stationed in Hispanola, now the Dominican Republic and Haiti, were well aware of the Spanish atrocities.  Friar Anton Montesino, O.P. living in Hispanola said in a Sunday homily, in 1511:

On what authority have you waged such detestable wars on these people? … Are they not human beings?  Have they no rational souls?  Are you not obligated to love them as you love yourselves?

This was at the beginning of the ‘conquista’; the evil that followed is so horrible it is difficult to imagine.  One of the Friars who heard Montesino’s homily, Bartolome de Las Casas, O.P., continued to protest the treatment of the natives in vain.

Artist:  Robert Lenz

   Twelfth century Theologian Moses Maimonides said that God is beyond our comprehension.  Who was Saint Teresa of Avila’s god? Surely the Divinity for her was not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

God rises in the divine council, gives judgment in the midst of the gods.  “How long will you judge unjustly and favor the cause of the wicked?  Defend the lowly and fatherless; render justice to the afflicted and needy.  Rescue the lowly and poor; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”  (Psalm 82)   

Teresa of Avila is a saint, but we cannot deny the fact that she did not say anything about the tragedy of the Americas and she and her order benefitted from it.

 

Sources

 Dr. Richard Lux, Notes from continuing education class, The Conscience of Israel, Sacred Heart Seminary, 2004; Gustavo Gutierrez, Las Casas,1993;  Cathleen Medwick, Teresa of Avila: The progress of a soul, 1999;  John Welch, Spiritual Pilgrims – Carl Jung and Teresa of Avila

The Working Catholic: Too Much Talk by Bill Droel

 

          A book discussion group is a plus for a neighborhood. In fact, any neighborhood with several such groups likely has a strong social fabric. However, a discussion group is mistaken to think it is social action--even if its selections are current affairs. A small group gathers for breakfast after the 9 A.M. Mass.  Its regulars share parish comings-and-goings and the latest on clergy shenanigans around the country.  The breakfast club certainly yields some mutual support but it is not an example of church improvement. A firm’s young lawyers gather on Friday for drinks. They talk about cases, judges, legal trends and office culture. The Friday social group is beneficial to its participants but they are not influencing the policies of their firm or the justice system in their town.

Eitan Hersh, a young professor at Tufts University, is interested in electoral politics. He keeps up with opinion polls, commentaries and surveys, plus he conducts some social science experiments and interviews grass-roots activists. He reaches a provocative conclusion: Citizens who volunteer for electoral campaigns also spend time watching and reading the news. They converse with friends about politics. However, “the opposite is not true… Those who spend a lot of time consuming politics are not participating actively in politics at all.” Among those “who consume news every day, most report belonging to zero organizations.” They care about following politics and exhibit “a growing sophistication in talking about elections” and such. They simply don’t care quite enough to participate beyond voting. And even when it comes to voting, they are more motivated by a presidential candidate than they are by policy changes or by midterm campaigns.

Hersh, in a fascinating book Politics Is for Power (Scribner, 2020), criticizes these political junkies or political hobbyists. Their pseudo-engagement actually “hinders the pursuit of political power.”

Hersh, with convincing examples, describes the alternative, which he calls deep canvassing or simply power politics. These are people who are “not following political drama or debating issues,” but are serious about “winning people over.” Their method is eliciting stories and sincerely listening. They do not recite a script heavy on issues. These change agents (who exist on the right and left) do not focus on one-off events or “on issues and ideological purity.” They are prepared for “slow and steady progress.” For them, power is not a topic, “it’s the goal.”

Hersh is aware that effective public conversations are inherently awkward. They do not add up to a tidy political parable. This style is an exercise in calculated vulnerability. It is respectful of differences and thus has the potential to build trust.

In several asides Hersh shares research conclusions. Half of non-voters (except perhaps in a presidential election) are college graduates yet they are the group more likely to consume political news. Among the non-voters, half later claim that they voted. Big donors to electoral campaigns are not as interested in issues as they are in connecting with political insiders and other donors at, for example, celebrity events. Small donors are attracted by ideology and “provocative appeals.” Men are more interested in politics than women, but women are more likely to vote.

In another aside (one that warrants a full chapter) Hersh applies his thesis to religion. He explores the popular distinction between spiritual and religious. It is similar, he says, as the distinction between those well-informed on politics but shallow in their political behavior and those with grass-roots political involvement. The spiritual types can include those who know plenty about their denomination. But their behavior foregoes a commitment to communal or institutional settings. The longer-haul religious types experience the same awkwardness as those involved in real politics. “It takes a certain maturity to find God in the person sitting next to you” during worship, Hersh concludes.

By several measures U.S. Catholicism is in decline. Its leaders often describe their desired transition to a renewed Catholicism as one of evangelization or, to use their jargon term, the new evangelization. But what does that mean? In some parishes the Bible study group is considered new evangelization. In other parishes it means a refresher course in dogma. These are good activities, but lacking outward action they are not effective evangelization.

 Back to Hersh: Churches could channel people’s energy into productive “forms of collective action.” But they “do not typically have a serious vision or resources” to help their faithful members “act differently.” The congregation, as should be expected, has meaningful worship. But its other efforts are heavy on socializing and light on truly listening to those who are spiritual but not religious. 

It is not a simple pivot from talk to evangelizing action because, as in the political realm, people have scant experience crafting a story of their life and eliciting the story of another person’s life. A possible exception might be those worshipers and those citizens who have benefited from a 12-step program. To be continued…

Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a free newsletter on faith and work.

The Working Catholic: Social Doctrine Part Eight by Bill Droel

Always do for others what they cannot do for themselves. That’s the rule of charity. Never do for others what they can do for themselves. That’s the rule of freedom. The Catholic principle of subsidiarity maintains the tension between the two. It guides the interplay of functions. It prevents charity from becoming disabling help and prevents freedom from becoming selfishness or libertarianism. Both extremes violate both charity and justice.  

The parents of Siddhartha Gautama, for whatever reason, were overly protective, giving him too much "love" or charity.  He eventually left home in search of what he called the middle way.  Teh careless parents of recent mass murderers were overly permissive.  the father of the Prodigal Son erred in both directions.  He was first too protective of his son and then, when the son wanted an early inheritance, the father permitted too much freedom.  

In Catholic social thought subsidiarity is usually invoked in the context of governmental responsibility and economic systems.  The current picture in our country has ragged individuals at one end and big government plus big business at the other end.  If something goes wrong with an internet or TV connection, it is a frustrated individual trying to reach an impersonal media company.  If poverty overwhelms a family, a seemingly helpful array of social programs possibly debilitates that family further.  

Despite some gestures and language to the contrary, Republicans and Democrats (with an occasional exception) include only individuals, government and business in their worldview. The operative philosophy and economic model of both political parties neglects those institutions that stand between the ragged individual and big forces--first the family, then associations like a parish, a union, an ethnic club, a veterans' group, a community organization and more.  Because ragged individuals and big entities do not have these mediating institutions in their picture, the local groups have grown weak in recent decades.

Oliver Zunz has written a biography of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), The Man Who Understood Democracy (Princeton Press, 2022).  James Madison (1751-1836) "talked only about factions," Zunz says in an interview.  He "feared them and sought ways of limiting their impact on government."  Madison favored a strong central government.  Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), on the other hand, was a pioneer in creating civil society, the realm for volunteer fire departments, local post offices, clubs and other mediating institutions.  De Tocqueville, Zunz says, found the United States to be unique in its dependence upon people's institutions.  However, de Tocqueville warned that our individualistic spirit could outpace our community spirit, resulting in a polarized society.   

Sometimes subsidiarity is rendered small is beautiful. It does not mean, however, that government governs best which governs least.  Subsidiarity insists that government step in, but not in a manner that creates dependence.  Whenever possible and always to the degree that is possible, government assistance should be delivered closest to those affected, delivered through local institutions.  Ideally, business should act responsibly.  A particular business and an industry should operate justly--first toward its employees and then toward its customers and suppliers and then its other stakeholders.  When business exploits employees, gauges, customers, pollutes the environment and in other ways operates selfishly, government has a duty to regulate and punish.  

Perhaps subsidiarity is better rendered no bigger than necessary.  It desires the formation of ragged individuals into community-minded citizens.  it protects an embedded person's responsible freedom by buggering those big entities that can smother a person.  To be continued...

Droel edits a printed newsletter on faith and work, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL  60629).

 

Review of Joseph Bernardin: Seeking Common Ground by Steven Millies.

           Cardinal Joseph Bernardin (1928-1996) was the most influential United States bishop of his era. Millies provides a concise though thoroughly researched, positive though fair-minded, clear-written biography. This book is part of the Liturgical Press “People of God” series.

Bernardin was born about seven months after his immigrant parents arrived in South Carolina. The family came from the Trentino region in what today is northern Italy and was ethnically Italian in language, food and all aspects of their culture. Bernardin’s father died when he was six-years old and he was then raised by his mother and by extended family. South Carolina was less than one percent Catholic during Bernardin’s time there. He attended public high school and began pre-med studies at a public university.

Millies traces Bernardin’s confidence, his ease with Protestants and non-Christians and his gentle compassion to these childhood and young adult influences; i.e. processing the loss of his father, depending on relatives and regularly interacting with non-Catholics.

Bernardin was ordained in 1952. Prior to becoming the youngest bishop in the United States in Atlanta at age 38, Bernardin, like most bishops, had scant parish experience. Instead he spent most of his early priesthood in the Charleston, South Carolina Chancery, including as chancellor and vicar general. The book proceeds more or less chronologically. Along the way Millies provides some intriguing, little-known facts. For example, in 1972 Bernardin, without publicity, became a first order Franciscan. He maintained a Franciscan spirituality thereafter and requested to be buried in his Franciscan habit.

As in Chicago’s Democratic machine, to move ahead within the Catholic clergy it is necessary to have a patron. Bernardin’s first patron was Archbishop Paul Hallinan (1911-1968), who served as bishop in Charleston for about five years and then was archbishop of Atlanta. Millies takes us inside the mutually beneficial Bernardin/Hallinan relationship. When Hallinan contracted a hepatitis infection, he summoned Bernardin from Charleston to, for all practical purposes, run his Atlanta Chancery. The two navigated race relations in Atlanta. They were so respected that at Hallinan’s funeral segregationist Gov. Lester Maddox (1915-2003) and Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) shared the same pew.

Three weeks after the Hallinan funeral, King was murdered. Bernardin soon left Atlanta for his new post as general secretary of what today is called the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Washington, DC. It was Bernardin’s second mentor, Cardinal John Dearden (1904-1988) of Detroit, who put him in charge of the conference. Both Hallinan and Dearden, as Millies describes them, were changed by Vatican II (1962-1965). Schooled in a clerical, self-assured church, these two bishops embraced the Vatican II vision of a church in dialogue with the modern world. Bernardin caught the same spirit.

In Washington and at his subsequent positions, as Millies writes, Bernardin had to balance two sides of his public personality: a hard-working “cautious bureaucrat” and a compassionate pastor. Millies recounts how, in casual conversation with two young Cincinnati priests, Bernardin admitted that his practice of prayer and reflection had faded away, while his administrative duties had taken over all his waking hours. The priests challenged him, and Bernardin resolved to spend the first hour each day in prayer.

As this biography moves to Chicago, where Bernardin served as archbishop from 1982 until his 1996 death, Millies delves into areas of controversy. Through the USCCB, Archbishop John Roach (1921-2003) selected Bernardin to chair an ad hoc committee on war and peace. Millies mentions that characteristically Bernardin insisted on diversity among the members of the committee, including a bishop In the Military Ordinariate and a Pax Christi bishop involved with anti-war protests. With the strong encouragement of bishop members of the committee, other bishops, and USCCB staff members Fr. Bryan Hehir and Edward Doherty (1915-1992), Bernardin also introduced a new process for ecclesial statements by inviting experts and interested citizens to testify before the committee. In May 1983 the bishops, voting 238 to nine, approved The Challenge of Peace. The document was widely covered in newspapers and magazines, making Bernardin a national figure. Millies mentions the “national political storm” caused by this document, including objections from the administration of President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) and from neoconservative Catholics. He explains that the document’s process and the reaction to it reinforced for Bernardin a concept that would later bring more controversy: a consistent ethic of life.

Millies is straight-forward on the clerical abuse crisis. Bernardin “followed the familiar pattern and transferred [deviant] priests from one parish to another,” he writes. On the other hand, Bernardin eventually realized that the abuse was a national problem that required a national policy of reporting. His Chicago plan became a model for the so-called Dallas Charter on abuse, enacted (though not consistently followed) six years after Bernardin’s death. Millies also recounts the incident in which Bernardin was accused of abuse; the retraction of the
accusation; and the reconciliation between Bernardin and his accuser. Millies, like others who
recount this incident paints Bernardin as an innocent victim. That’s accurate to an extent. But
Millies leaves out a fact: The accuser, a former seminarian in Cincinnati, was indeed abused by a priest whom Bernardin failed to monitor.

In the latter part of this biography Millies supplies some history that pertains to the current dysfunction of the United States bishops’ conference. From his earliest days of priesthood, Bernardin was clear in his opposition to abortion. Beginning in 1974, however, he strove to explain that the sacredness of life is not just a Catholic thing. Further, he believed that focusing exclusively on abortion was too narrow an approach to promoting dignified life. He began to use the phrase “seamless garment” to describe an inclusive social ethic. In his final months Bernardin launched the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, an attempt to advance his thinking through civil dialogue. Unfortunately, Bernardin—usually a savvy insider—didn’t have the support of enough fellow bishops. Even as he was in his final days, an east coast Cardinal attacked the Initiative. Others piled on to undermine the seamless garment metaphor; their campaign said opposition to abortion has to be “the preeminent issue.”

It would be nice to say that now 26-years after his death Bernardin’s legacy as a conciliatory peace bishop is solidly in place. He directly influenced a handful of bishops, though they are retired or soon to retire. There are a few other Bernardin-like bishops. But to judge by their recent votes, the majority of United States bishops now prefer to righteously call out politicians and others who do not meet their standards rather than engage in the Vatican II-inspired dialogue with the world.

What about Bernardin in Chicago? There is a school and a cancer clinic named for him. Plus the Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union (www.ctu.edu) nobly keeps his spirit alive. Millies was a professor in South Carolina when he wrote this book. Fittingly, he now directs that Bernardin Center. 

Catholicism can still be an instrument for peace. It will take a new generation of young adults who, perhaps inspired by Bernardin and others, apply their own thoughts and experiences to Christian engagement with the world.

References
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). (1983). The Challenge of Peace:
God's Promise and Our Response. Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops.
https://www.usccb.org/upload/challenge-peace-gods-promise-our-response-1983.pdf

The Journal of Social Encounters, Volume 6  Issue 2   #145 July 2022
Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2016. 137 pp., $14.95, ISBN 9780814648063

William Droel, National Center for the Laity, Chicago, IL

Droel edits a free printed newsletter on faith and work, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago,
IL 60629).