Inside America

Spirituality Yes
Spiritualism No

Faith is the Recognition of the Presence of Christ in the World

In a new preface to his 1968 classic Introduction to Christianity, Cardinal Ratzinger observes that the greatest obstacle to understanding the uniqueness of the Christian faith is not last century’s atheistic (practical or theoretical) humanism, especially its Marxist variety, but a new paganism that separates religiosity from truth. Hence, we have the present popularity of a “spirituality” that is not guided by reality but by the manipulation of emotions. This is spiritualism, and it is in total opposition to Christian spirituality. Romans 12, 1-8, contains a good description of “Christian spirituality.” St Paul does not use the term “spirituality.” Instead, he talks about “reasonable” or “logical” worship, that is, one that corresponds with the reality of the destiny and needs of the human person. This reasonable worship consists of “offering your bodies” as a “living sacrifice” that is “holy and agreeable to God.” “Offering your bodies” could be translated also as “presenting your humanity,” which means living a human life, engaging in and interacting with reality in a truly human way, making ourselves “present.” What is this truly human way? It is being present in the world “as a living sacrifice,” through the unreserved gift of self as the embodiment of love, of mercy. This is why St Paul exhorts us to live like this “by the mercy of God,” that is, in response to the experience of mercy through the encounter with Christ. Christian spirituality is not the expression of our religious sensibilities, but of faith as the recognition of the objective presence of Christ in the world. This objective presence occurs through the Church, so that Christian spirituality is making ours the spirituality of the Church, living according to that communion created by the objective events of Christ’s life made present to us through the sacraments. The ecclesial, sacramental roots of Christian spirituality protect us from the temptations of an escapist spiritualism. In order to live this way, we must not allow ourselves to be “shaped” or “schematized” by the “world,” that is, by a way of being present in the world that excludes the effects of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Instead, writes Paul, we must be changed, “metamorphized” by the “renewal of our minds.” Our “minds” does not refer to our particular opinions or ideas, but to the way we think, the way we judge what is real, the way we perceive reality. This change in us through the objective encounter with Christ is the point of departure for our action in the world. “Spirituality” is an expression of this change. It is called “spirituality” because it is the change brought about in us by the Holy Spirit. This change, this conversion of our “minds,” will allow us, writes Paul, to understand (literally to “document,” that is, to experience) what God’s will is, which is His plan for our destiny, and thus what is “good, agreeable, and perfect” because it corresponds to what our hearts desire. When “spirituality” is detached from its roots in the objective event of Christ, it becomes “spiritualism” and joins the moralism and legalism of the dominant culture, where it quickly degenerates into that “tenderness” against which Flannery O’Connor warns us, whose ultimate outcome is violent death.