tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667173462753211299.post4964800359947846090..comments2023-01-01T08:24:11.147+00:00Comments on Catholic Scot: Is Spirituality Superior to Religion 2?Catholic Scothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01820688010421857488noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667173462753211299.post-48288567068972196922014-07-04T18:13:18.106+01:002014-07-04T18:13:18.106+01:00Just to note that not only is Justin Welby hanging...Just to note that not only is Justin Welby hanging with Roman Catholics, it turns out that Rowan's taken to Buddhism: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10942056/Rowan-Williams-how-Buddhism-helps-me-pray.html - so appropriating non-matching hats and handbags all over the place. And as anyone reading this blog from, say, a small Caribbean island, will be able to affirm, religion too can transmogrify into all sorts of local patois, like the riffing between Christianity and voodoo. I suspect that some people are ultimately called to bring stability to systems, and others to shake them up a bit, and both are healthy at different places and times.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04547218267037441322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667173462753211299.post-85966516937839034772014-07-03T21:34:02.493+01:002014-07-03T21:34:02.493+01:00No system involving people is failsafe because the...No system involving people is failsafe because there is nothing that people can't misuse and abuse. The advantage of organised religion is that it provides the maximum number of people with the maximum number of opportunities to raise their horizons. And it can do this for generation after generation. Moreover it has a spillover effect (the leaven that leavens the whole) so that even those who are only peripherally aware of it will have their actions and value systems in some way affected by it. Depending upon your perspective the effects of religion can be pervasive, invasive or in your face but its ubiquity can have results in a way that individual spiritualities or therapeutic regimes and scientific theories cannot. It is also democratic in the sense that it can appeal to and be embraced by all sections of society from the illiterate to the academic.<br /><br />Of course if the organisation falls into the hands of the wrong sort of people who use it for the wrong sort of reasons then it can do great harm. But to the extent that it is a custodian of a revelation and set of doctrines which its managers cannot alter or hide then from one generation to the next leadership can be reclaimed by those more true to the spirit of the Founder.<br /><br />Religion systematically aims to produce good people and it applies the cumulative wisdom of the ages and the content of revelation (and, in the case of Catholicism, the sacraments) to achieve this end. The instrument may appear defective when applied unskilfully but the fault lies with those who wield it. Of course I would contend that some religions are both defective by comparison with Christianity and unskilfully wielded but that does not exempt the stewards of the Christian faith from their responsibility to be the best they can be.<br /><br />As far as the misuse of psychology goes I seem to recall that the Soviet Union used it as a tool of social control and certainly used psychiatry as an instrument for locking up dissidents.Catholic Scothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01820688010421857488noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667173462753211299.post-55536540152890394742014-07-03T20:57:48.100+01:002014-07-03T20:57:48.100+01:00I think the point I was circling around with 2. an...I think the point I was circling around with 2. and 4., is that adhering to a fairly watertight set of practices doesn't seem to defend people from the very bad habits that having a fairly watertight set of practices ought in theory to prevent. It seems to me that you can have the vaguest and most self indulgent of ethical frameworks (look at Oscar Schindler, for instance) and actually turn out to be an excellent person if, despite everything, you are a relational sort of person with a good heart. And you can have a very strict sense of values - ones which tell you repeatedly to love your neighbour - and end up being terminally small minded (like Anglican Mainstream, who literally never think about anything except gays and Islam). I accept that 'religion done right' can produce impressive people who do impressive things - but religion's only better than spirituality if that's where it would tend to lead most people. That's where psychology comes in (which I agree may be perfectly compatible with faith) - it seems rather less open to the sorts of misinterpretation possible when confronted with ancient often highly ambiguous texts.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04547218267037441322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667173462753211299.post-23187413320478440252014-07-03T19:33:05.027+01:002014-07-03T19:33:05.027+01:00Thanks for your initial thoughts. And-
1. I'm ...Thanks for your initial thoughts. And-<br />1. I'm not really talking about individuals constructing their own particular dogmatic structures. The spirituality is as changeable and malleable as the person holding it. I'm talking about restricting spirituality to 'what works for me right now.' An incuriosity about what works for other people suggests an approach that emphasises one's uniqueness and ignores that which one shares with others. It's like Zaphod Beeblebrox in the total perspective vortex.<br /><br />2.Well yes there are those within Christianity who are profoundly ignorant about their own religion and deeply hostile to other ones but thats a whole different blog really.<br /><br />3. In Catholicism why you do what you do is as important in many ways as what you do. By which I mean what your motivation is rather than what the underlying idea behind the practice or sacrament might be. Acquiring knowledge, which is a good thing, can enable you to challenge abuses but that doesn't mean that you have wasted your time up to that point. If you have developed the virtues of patience, humility and prayer along the way, for example, these will continue to stand you in good stead. They can exist both alongside of and independent off understanding at least in the learning stage.<br /><br />4. I think you are presenting a both/and option as an either/or one. An understanding of the sciences of the mind and the like can be incorporated into a religious understanding, nothing that is true in science can be opposed to something that is true in religion. In forming a synthesis we are bound to accept the facts that science proves but not the framework which scientists surround them with.<br /> Catholic Scothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01820688010421857488noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1667173462753211299.post-84431665862392265312014-07-03T18:49:39.401+01:002014-07-03T18:49:39.401+01:00I may need a couple of goes at this, but as an ini...I may need a couple of goes at this, but as an initial reaction:<br /><br />1. I don't count myself as among the terminally incurious, and I only think that avoiding a spiritual tradition makes you in a 'one person religion' if you're still profoundly dogmatic. I suspect most people aren't like that: you form an ethical framework from a powerful mishmash of what your parents and your society think, your life experience, and your own inclinations and convictions. I think that's enough to get most of us through eighty odd years of body ownership.<br /><br />2. One of the things that has really struck me through a few years of both talking and bickering with religious people is how ignorant so many are of their own traditions - and how my rickety grasp of the basics of Christianity begins to look positively knowledgeable. I still think that no-one should be allowed to call themselves a Christian without first reading Diarmaid McCulloch's history of christianity, or something similar, at knifepoint if necessary. At worst, you get profoundly ignorant people, terrified of the history of their own tradition, who nevertheless think they have comfortable grounds for opposing outgroups who make them feel uncomfortable. These, surely, are the most depressing of the terminally incurious, and there's little I can respect about their faith.<br /><br />3. I actually agree about being cautious about stripping away tradition because you can't at first see the immediate point of it, and also in the virtue of bearing with something that initially seems very limiting. The analogy that works best for me in this regard is food: in the last hundred years our culture has replaced slow well made approaches to growing and eating with fast food, microwaves and tons of sugar - and the epic amount of illness this is causing is only now becoming apparent. I find it quite easy to believe that this could be spiritually so, too. But conversely, it's easy to see people, especially women, submitting themselves to traditions, sometimes for hundreds of years, that are everything to do with maintaining the power of the powerful, and little to do with some wholly imagined benefit. Slavery aside, which is universal, so many of these traditions seem to boil down to inflicting harm on the bodies of women (from foot binding, to child marriage, to FGM, to submission to a bullying husband, to constant unwanted pregnancy, to ideological withholding of education) that actually thwart flourishing as a questioning, curious person in a mysterious universe. It's only by being alive to the abuses that strict religious adherence can bring with it, that it's possible to clear the decks and also see the positives that may come from being 'religious' rather than spiritual.<br /><br />4. Finally, there's a different sort of knowledge that is available to us now, and wasn't available in any clear form to those who wrote holy texts - stuff around psychology and the unconscious, how the brain works, and insights about things like how we project what we most dislike about ourselves onto others. (Jeremy Young's The Cost of Certainty is an interesting read). I admit that you might reach some of these understandings through a religious tradition, eventually, but for me, these insights speak to more directly about the sort of universe I'm in than picking through most religious texts. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04547218267037441322noreply@blogger.com