THE INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH: THE CONFESSIONS OF A CATHOLIC ANARCHIST.

This blog is part of chain-Lectio Divina meditations prompted by my most recent gathering of the Lay Cistercians of Our Lady of the Holy Cross Monastery (Trappist) in Conyers, Georgia. It is the second in a series of three meditations downloaded to me by the Holy Spirit. I don’t know how else to say it. Remember, I only claim to Speak TO the Holy Spirit, not FOR the Holy Spirit, and attempt to grab a fragment here or there.

In the reality in which I find myself (which is not your reality), I must convert myself daily (sometimes hourly when I can remember it) to move from my false self (rationality) to my true self (rationality totally encumbered by spirituality as I can experience it).

THE MULTI-LAYERED MEANINGS OF ANARCHY

“The Multiple Meanings of Anarchy

Anarchy exemplifies how words may have similar yet distinctive meanings. The earliest recorded use of the word, from the early 16th century, meant simply “absence of government,” albeit with the implication of civil disorder. A similar but ameliorated meaning began to be employed in the 19th century about a Utopian society that had no government. The establishment of these two senses of anarchy did not stop the word from being applied outside the realm of government with the broadened meaning of ”a state of confusion or disorder.” The existence of definitions that are in semantic conflict does not imply that one (or more) of them is wrong; it simply shows that multisense words like anarchy mean different things in different contexts. Another example of a sense-shifting word relating to government is aristocracy. When first used in English, this word meant “government by the best individuals.” It may still be used in such a fashion, but more commonly, it is encountered in the extended sense of “the aggregate of those believed to be superior.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anarchy

ROMANCING THE NOTION OF A CATHOLIC ANARCHIST

Let me unfurl my true colors before I am burned at the stake (or is it steak?). My notion of anarchy is tied up in the following observations from many sources.

In Baptism, I must die to all that the World holds true, abandon the physical and mental universes where I reside, and plunge into the waters of Faith, living that what I gave up will lead me to my next level of evolution. This level of consciousness can only be entered by an act of the will that acknowledges that the kingdom of Heaven is the fulfillment of my humanity and in the act of giving or destroying the present reality (my false self), that I emerge from the water into a new life with Jesus as my sole center.

Anarchy daily is my lot as a Lay Cistercian because I must die to self, to the posturing of false prophets who call for me to leave the institutional church in favor of the innocuous seductions of this age. Christ tells us:  

24 Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat;^r but if it dies, it produces much fruit.

25 Whoever loves his life^* loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.^s

26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.^t https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/12

And again: Jesus: A Cause of Division.^*

49“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!

50^* There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!^u

51 Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?^v No, I tell you, but rather division.^w

52 From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three;

53 A father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”^x Luke 12:49

Christ is an anarchist, in the sense I use that term. Being Catholic is not cotton candy but taking up my cross daily and following the example of Christ by abandoning my will to His Way, His Truth, and His Life.

Anarchy is how I look at the institutional church and cut through all the superfluous and tangential beliefs in favor of how I “Have in me the mind of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5)

My reflections on “anarchy” tend to limit the political implications, although that meaning is probably at the heart of Democrat or Republican purpose for our country. I look at this word with several dimensions: “to overthrow existing rules and regulations either with or without something to replace it.” The notion of replacement with something I think of equal value is very closely associated with my view of this process of iconoclastic detoxification of existing rules.

In that spirit, anarchy is at the heart of the Gospel message. I must deny myself, in this case, my false self and the primacy of my human experiences as the center of my life in favor of an entirely new set of values.

My tendency to be anarchical is more akin to the notion of St. Charles de Foucault and the total abandonment of self, not to oblivion, but to The Christ Principle, whatever that meant to him. It is more related to the total abandonment or dying of the false self and replacing it with the Cistercian notion of conversio morae and capacitas dei, replacing the values of the World (Galatians 5) with those of the Spirit of Truth as practiced by the Cistercian order and interpreted as such from the Rule of St. Benedict.

That God is anarchical is contained in the Teilhard Map of Cosmic Perspective (Unattributed), which shows a universe or reality in constant moving with two forces at work: complexity (growing more profound in my humanity) and consciousness (converting my old experiences with ever-new and better expressions of what it means to be human at my most profound level of humanity). Anarchy requires intelligence, purpose, and free will to replace something with something better. Conversio morae, in the Cistercian way, is such a movement of replacing the false self with the true self, this self meaning the free overthrow of the kingdom of the World for that of The Christ Principle or Christogenesis as explained on the map below. This is a process for Cistercians and Lay Cistercians with the discipline of daily conversion to the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5) and the conversion of false self to true self (capacitas dei).

• In the map below, the Father is an anarchist because he shares power and energy with Humans only to have them reject him.
• Christ restored that energy (covenant relationship of divine nature, human nature, animal nature) and allowed all humans to become fully human as their nature intended. Christ did not cling to being God, as Philippians 2:5-12 states, but took on the nature of a slave (the human nature of Adam and Eve),
• The Holy Spirit infuses matter and time to sustain persons in each age, mainly me, the individual, as I accumulate what it means to be fully human, what it means to love authentically, and what is valid from what will not give me the energy to be lifted up to that next level of my humanity in Baptism, Eucharist, Penance.

My progression of thinking concerning anarchy is that just as I must die to self at Baptism (and daily after that) and use the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation to sustain myself throughout the rest of my life until I reach Omega, the Kingdom of Heaven in Heaven, I must also die to be a Catholic and the Institutional Church. Appropriately understood, this overthrow makes everything new again and puts everything in its proper order, as in “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all else will follow.” What I gain from this approach is to have new wineskins where I can place the new wine of my direct contact with Christ in contemplation and in service to others. “For behold, I make all things new,” says Christ. It is not an accident that Christ ultimately gave us of Himself, without reservation, as food for the journey. It is no accident that Christ established Himself as the Real Presence who makes us pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and start all over again.

The Institutional Church is the repository and depository of those who have gone before me (The Saints and saints) and have denied the Catholic Church like I deny my humanity, only to refocus myself on the intense core of what is at the center of my Faith.

The Catholic Church is the Body of Christ now and in Heaven, but it is not my center. The power of the institutional Church lies in its capture of the practices and charisms that Christ left to those who came after Him, the fidelity of those who do not see Christ but act with the Faith that is the energy of that institutional church, and comes from the Son loving the Father, and that love is the person of the Holy Spirit, our advocate as we live out our life experiences. We can choose suitable (those that come from Christ) or evil, those that come from the Ruler of the World (Satan).

With all its rites, the Catholic Church allows me to approach the Sacred as did all those who went before me in Faith, Hope, and Love. The ancient saying, “Outside the Church, there is no salvation,” should give all of us pause to consider that we all must be anarchists to the notion that the institutional church is a bunch of laws to be practiced rather than to practice those same laws and produce abundant fruit from our giving up false self to that of a newly adopted son or daughter of the Father.

As I use it, anarchy is continuously seeking new skins for the new wine I receive each day when I purposefully place myself in the presence of Christ through Cistercian practices and charisms to die to that part of my humanity that wants to keep me from putting my new wine in new skins.

Be careful when messing with the institutional church, the living Body of Christ. Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons, has a line in it that is particularly appropriate to the temptation of Satan to have factions in the Church Universal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMqReTJkjjg

Seek what is more profound in the institutional church, and you will find what you desire. It is the living depository and repository of the way, the truth, and the life.

To be continued…

uiodg