Absalom, Absalom!

I have just finished reading a novel of William Faulkner – no small feat. His prose is difficult though masterful. I had always wanted to read more of him, recognized him for the superb writer he was and, at this point, had a bit of time to do so. Absalom, Absalom! was a chance but fortuitous choice. I happened to be at hand at the library! I really did not know what to expect. It is a novel about the deep South of the 19^th century (1830s to 1910), published in 1936.

A short presentation of the plot is in order if I am to make any comments. It is the story of Thomas Sutpen in fictional Yokapatawpha County, (Mississippi) and of his children, especially his son, Henry. It covers the period before, during and after the American Civil War.

The story is told almost entirely through flashbacks provided by several persons involved in quite different ways with what happened as Quentin, the son of a friend of Sutpen, shares what he has heard with a Canadian (Alberta) friend in a student residence at Harvard University around 1910. The stories do not coincide on the facts or their interpretation and it is only toward the end of the novel that readers can attempt to piece together their own version.

What does not seem to be in question is that around 1830, Thomas Sutpen arrived in Jefferson, Mississippi with a gang of slaves and a French architect. Through sheer sweat and labour he builds a local empire symbolized by a large mansion cut right out the swamp. He has the intention of passing this on to his son. As the story evolves we also see how Thomas’ son, Henry, becomes the wayward son fighting what his father had built. Ultimately all is destroyed and very tragically. (It should be noted that the title of the Novel refers to a biblical story of the tragic death of Absalom, son of King David. David, too, built a small kingdom but was betrayed by his son who died tragically.)

Toward the end of my reading, I began to ask myself why I had stuck to my reading and finished the novel. After all, the Civil War period of US history, while interesting, is not at all at the centre of my interests today. Then it hit me that perhaps I could learn something from the novel about my last twelve years in Quebec.  There are similarities between the Old South and Quebec today. Both are territories that have been dominated for centuries by an outside force, in the case of Quebec, it would be the political and financial interests of Anglophone Canada. Both were subjected to a war of conquest.

The South depended on Black slavery to maintain its economy through a system of exclusion and oppression. How could this be true of Quebec? Today, it is immigrants who provide much of the hard labour that sustains the economy of Quebec. At the same time, there is a quiet racism that marginalizes them from much of the benefits of both the economy and Quebec’s social life. Like the Blacks in the South, they are appreciated for their music and dance, but largely kept outside the ranks of the privileged classes. In Quebec, these recent immigrants include Africans, Haitians and people from the Maghreb (North Africa). 

There is no worse racism than the racism that does not exist. In the Old South, there was no question. There was racism and everyone knew it. If one was against racism, there was a clear target. In Quebec there is no racism - officially. It is outlawed; there are laws and regulations that clearly indicate that discrimination is now permitted. Racism simply does not exist in the mind of Quebec. But, of course, it does exist and it is rampant especially in the work place and in rental housing.

At the very end of the novel, Quentin, who has been the recipient of all the various versions of the story of the Sutpen, lies in his bed at Harvard in 1920, muttering to himself over and over again, speaking of the South, “I don’t hate it!  I don’t! I don’t hate it!” But of course this is precisely his struggle, as is also that of Faulkner himself, who places in the mouth of Shreve, the young Canadian who has heard the story from Quentin, the prophecy that, in a thousand years, the Blacks will dominate the world scene: a remarkable statement for one writing in the 1930s.

Looking at Catholicism from the outside

   I have been a Roman Catholic priest for almost 50 years. My studies have specialized in the philosophy of religious experience, that is to say, and exploration of how the structure of human consciousness is oriented toward religious experience, an experience of the transcendent, of what surpasses both our being and our awareness. Human beings are always in search of what is “more” and there is no limit to the search for that “more.”

    As a Roman Catholic, I studied my own tradition pretty thoroughly, but at a time, during the Second Vatican Council, when the Church was questioning its relevance for its own times and questioning how its presence and message could speak more clearly to the searching and questioning of its time.

    This led me to ask what it was that our times were asking, what they were searching for, what were the specific modalities of the questioning of society today. I was led to look well beyond the walls of Roman Catholicism, to explore other religious traditions and the vast secular world of today.

Blog entries are generally short, so this can only be a brief snapshot of some impressions gathered over many years.  I simply state my points and leave to another time and place the job of developing them.  What you will find here are no more than starting points for a reflection.

    Fifty years ago, theologians studied religious traditions in order to figure out how best to argue their weaknesses and to draw their followers into unity with Roman Catholicism. However, that thinking took a turn after the Second Vatican Council. Theologians began rather to ask what Roman Catholicism could learn from those traditions. I would like to think that the search has deepened and widened as the decades have passed.

    One of the earliest divergences from Roman Catholicism is found in Orthodox Christianity. Here, I simply note that Orthodoxy represents, among other things, a reminder to Roman Catholicism that there are many legitimate ways of living the Catholic faith and that fidelity does not mean uniformity in liturgical and legal structures.  While Roman Catholicism developed a strong theology of the humanity of Christ, Orthodoxy insisted on his divinity as ruler of the universe. This is becoming more and more important for dealing with the ecological crisis today. Christians need a way of seeing how Christ is central to the natural world around them.

    Protestantism went a step further by drawing us back to rediscover the Gospel roots of our faith in the earliest Christian communities. Protestantism invited us to simplify our faith, to rediscover its basic elements. This went much further in later evangelism with its focus our attention on a personal commitment to Jesus and his mission.

    It was only quite late in history that Roman Catholicism in Europe came into intimate contact with Buddhism and Hinduism even though there were Christian communities in India from the very first centuries. Buddhism is an ancient tradition that pays attention to the question of suffering.  Buddhism teaches us that we create suffering by our distorted desires and expectations of life. It invites us to live freely each moment without undue concern or expectation and by accepting each moment as a gift.  

    Hinduism reminds us that there are many forces in the universe that deserve our attention. There are many “gods.” This is in no way contrary to the belief that there is one God creator of all. But it does help us recognise the multitude of forces (spirits, daemons) at work in the universe and to pay attention to how each of them operates.

    Islam emphasizes the unity of God and centres the life of faith on surrender to the divine will. The word “Islam” itself means surrender.

In more recent years considerable attention has been given to what were generally considered quite marginal traditions such as those of Aboriginal peoples and even the pre-Christian traditions in Europe. Many of us lost sight of these traditions. Aboriginal peoples throughout the world share a spirituality deeply rooted in the forces of nature; it is a spirituality that prizes harmony with the world of water, earth, air, plants, animals and fish. It is a spirituality that returns us constantly to recognise with gratitude the gift of that delicate balance of the natural forces. This is also true of traditional African religions and of the variations that travelled to Brazil, Haiti and elsewhere.

    Historically European spirituality finds strong roots in what came before the announcement of the Christian Gospel. It is where most of us come from in one way or another. Much of the colouring of the beliefs and rituals of European-rooted Roman Catholicism can be found in pre-Christian religious beliefs and rituals among the Celtic peoples, the Vikings, Germans and Goths. Moreover, there are many people today who are returning to these traditions because of their closeness to nature and its cycles. They provide a path through life that contrasts with the rather esoteric beliefs and rituals of Roman Catholicism, which, for the uninitiated, seem incomprehensible and very heavy to bear.

    Even as all of these traditions receive respectful attention, there is also disarray. Some are widely misunderstood and even feared by the general public. Some groups have deliberately tried to misrepresent them.  Nevertheless, they deserve to be understood and treated with respect. Christianity is laden with centuries of accretions that need to be put in perspective so that the underlying spirit behind them comes forward. We are in a time of great upheaval, a time of epochal change. It will be important to critique our religious traditions and so discover what needs to be abandoned and what needs to be held on to fiercely in order to navigate into the future. Each has a voice at a table where we can all learn from one another how to live together in this one Earth.

    There is much still to learn. Allow me simply to offer a list of what I have gleaned from decades of observation:

a.      Religion is for us, not for God. Religion is a way of finding our way through life. It is not a system for obeying the dictates of a God “out/up there.”

b.      The material world is our foundation for understanding religion and the path through life it points to.

c.      There is only one world: the material world and it is a world of spirit. Everything that exists is incarnate spirit. Spirit is a dimension of matter; matter is a dimension of spirit.

d.      The spiritual forces in the material world deserve/require our respect, reverence and attention.

e.      These forces or spirits can help us recognise an underlying Great Spirit, God or Creator Spirit who is one and who remains a great mystery, but one that is at the very origin and sustenance of life.

f.       This Great Spirit is father-like in manifesting great inner power and, most of all, mother-like in tenderness, compassion and generosity.

g.      We learn about these forces, spirits, through observation of nature and through stories.

h.      Religious stories speak through symbols that need to be interpreted with wisdom and prudence

i.       Christianity is a “revelation” religion that claims to describe for us our relationship with God and God’s relationship with us. We need to be very careful in how we interpret the revelation so that it continues to guide us without becoming oppressive.

j.       Christianity is fundamentally about our liberation from all that would restrict the universe (and ourselves) in its fullness, completeness, happiness.