“Let us forgive and ask forgiveness!” In his homily at St. Peter’s Basilica on the first Sunday in Lent, Pope John Paul II made this statement twice so as to emphasize its importance.

The pope called upon members of the Catholic Church to “confess the sins of Christians of yesterday along with their own.” Explaining why Catholics should accept responsibility for those who lived long ago, he added: “We all carry the weight of the errors and sins of those who have preceded us, even if we aren’t personally responsible.”

To make this request for forgiveness even more dramatic, seven cardinals and bishops confessed the sins of Christians against specific groups of people. The first acknowledged sins against the Jews and asked God to purify the hearts of those who have committed them.

Other groups that were named included women, native peoples, immigrants, the poor, and the unborn. To each prayer the pope responded with a prayer of his own, again asking forgiveness.

The pope went further in confessing the responsibility of church members for the evils of today. Among them he mentioned specifically failure to care about the poor of many countries.

The spiritual meaning of these actions by the pope is wide and deep. In taking this unprecedented step to purify the conscience of his church, the pope is surely carrying out what he sees as the will of God.

In the whole history of the Christian church, nothing quite like this has been done previously. You can be sure that the effects of this act of atonement will have a large impact on religious history.

However, despite its scope, this action on the part of the pope has already proven a lightening rod for criticism. Almost immediately after the statement was publicized, people began to find fault with what the pope said.

The criticisms come in four main forms. First, many say that, welcome as the request for forgiveness is, it does not go far enough. For instance, the apology about mistreatment of the Jews does not mention the Holocaust, the slaughter of Jewish people engineered by the Nazis. Nor does the prayer about “sins commit-ted in the service of truth” say anything specific about the Crusades and the Inquisition.

Secondly, the various prayers of confession do not accuse the church itself of sin but only its members. In the effort to keep the holiness of the Church sa-cred, the pope seems to exempt the institution from direct responsibility. Only individual people, “the children of the church,” are seen as guilty of immoral behavior.

Thirdly, some observers feel that asking forgiveness does not amount to much more than political correctness. “Everybody is apologizing for everything, these days,” a friend told me last week. “It has become the stylish thing to do.”

Finally, even some fervent Catholics feel no responsibility for sins com-mitted by people who lived long ago and far away. As another friend says, “I do not feel involved in what they did and the request for their forgiveness leaves me cold.” This was said by a woman who is both humanly sensitive and deeply spiritual.

All of these objections have something to be said for them perhaps. But it seems to me that they are beside the main point. They ignore the spiritual courage of a leader determined to set his church on a new course. Despite opposition even within the Vatican itself, this pope has done something bold that no one of his predecessors dared do.

To move an institution with a billion members and a two-thousand year history takes tremendous dedication. That John Paul II, in his eightieth year, has managed to bring his church this far witnesses to a deep and fruitful spiritual life. This accomplishment must be judged, not simply in political terms, however re-fined, but also from the viewpoint of the soul.

It is important to realize that the pope is a person for whom the spiritual life is all-important. As Protestant theologian Harvey Cox says, “John Paul II is a genuine mystic.” This fact may be the key to understanding the pope’s dramatic asking for forgiveness.

To take an action of this scope requires great strength of soul and a deep belief in the power of the divine to change human life.

Richard Griffin

A college student of my acquaintance is taking a course this semester in Catholic theology. This course marks the first time she has chosen to study anything theological or religious during her four years at college. In response to my interest, she explained why she has made the choice.

Her father died two months ago after an illness lasting two years. He was only in his early fifties, and his death hit family members hard. For his daughter, it raised questions that she had never before faced.

Though she had been brought up in the Catholic tradition and had gone through religious education classes, her faith had not kept pace with her overall personal development. Or, at least, her beliefs had never been challenged by a personal crisis. Her father’s death, however, has changed that situation and now she wants to understand better the faith of her family and of her own childhood.

This young woman’s experience has relevance to the question I have been asked most often by grandparents encountered on speaking tours in Florida. At churches there, I have been surprised by the number of people deeply troubled by their grandchildren’s indifference to the spiritual tradition handed on to them. They lament that their children’s children no longer go to church and they worry about the consequences of abandoning religious practice.

My response relates to the situation of the college student mentioned above. She needed a crisis to awaken her interest in her religious tradition. Until her father’s death, it was all lifeless doctrine to her, without sufficient meaning to make her ask vital questions.

Many young Americans who have grown up in middle-class society have never suffered any serious loss or personal failure. They have arrived at early adulthood without any shocks to their expectation of daily life being safe and more or less rational.

No encounters with evil in any form have upset their complacent outlook on the world. Affluence and education, among other factors, have shielded them against the rude events experienced by so many older people.

These young people do not need religion. At least, that’s what they think. In the world as they have known it, everything is well enough ordered that church seems superfluous. When all is well and everyone thriving, why complicate life by bringing in religion?

Sympathetic though I am with the desire to see one’s own spiritual tradition passed on to descendants, I always advise grandparents to be patient and wait. Inevitably life will surprise their grandchildren and their spiritual situation will change. Someday they will suffer the death of people they love; they will also come up against other events that shake them to their roots.

Perhaps they will then discover a personal need for religion; they may find in their own tradition more value than they once thought.

In response to this kind of worry, I emphasize that the God in whom the grandparents believe is one who loves their grandchildren. No matter what they do, they cannot escape God’s love. As the Psalmist asks, “Whither can I go from thy spirit / Whither can I flee from thy presence?”

God has not finished with these young people yet. They are still works in progress. Most probably, long life lies before them with plenty of opportunities for spiritual discovery. In the meantime, believers cannot afford to sell God’s love short.

Lurking behind the worry may be fear about salvation. Though in some quarters it may seem old-fashioned nowadays, people still feel anxious about their loved ones escaping punishment for their sins and entering through the gates of heaven. Christians often fear that, if children are not baptized, then they will re-main outside the ranks of those who have been chosen for heaven.

There again, does not this attitude come perilously close to a denial of God’s universal love? To place limits on divine love seems equivalent to making God merely human, subject to the same inability to love that afflicts us.

A truly spiritual approach would instead seem to call for confidence that God loves those we love at least as much as we do. Yes, concern for the spiritual welfare of our loved ones is certainly appropriate – it can even be called God-like. But should not believers have enough confidence in the God whom they profess to be above all a lover, that they dare entrust their loved ones to God’s hands?

Richard Griffin

The Princeton University scholar finished his second lecture by saying of his friends and associates, “they teach me that grace is everywhere.”

These words come from Albert Raboteau, whose “Lectures on Living a Spiritual Life in the Contemporary World” inspired an audience at Harvard Divin-ity School last week.

Professor Raboteau grew up in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, in a African-American/Creole family, “Roman Catholic as far back as we knew.” His great-grandmother had been a slave.

Three months before Albert’s birth, his father was shot dead by a white man with precious little provocation. Until her son prepared to leave home for college, his mother (and step father) did not share details of the murder with him “because they did not want me to grow up hating white people.”

Albert’s step father had been a Catholic priest but, under the pressures that African-American clergy felt in the church, he left the priesthood in 1947. He was the one who had baptized Albert.

Albert himself could never count on being given communion when outside a “black church.” One time, going to a “white church,” he was passed by twice, until the priest had given the host to every white person there. On another occasion, he and his mother were refused communion altogether. After this experience he went out into the street and wept.

During much of his adolescence, he wanted to become a priest himself. For this sensitive young man, “the sheer beauty and poignancy of the world could break me into tears.” And yet, “there was an edge of sadness in everything.”

At age thirteen he read Thomas Merton’s “The Seven Storey Mountain,” a book that helped shape his ideal of the spiritual life. Merton and Martin Luther King became his inspirations, and Rev. King’s preaching against the Vietnam War moved him to tears.

Notable academic success came his way both in college and later in grad-uate schools but a heavy burden weighed down his spirit. “I tried to become per-fect,” he explains, “I wanted to be a saint.”

Later, he was swept up in the civil rights and the anti-war movements. De-spite the complications this caused for his graduate studies, he managed to get master’s degrees in literature at Berkeley and theology at Marquette but neither field of study satisfied his soul.

Finally he found an academic field that suited him – history at Yale where he began study of the religion practiced by slaves. This record of faith touched him deeply, faith like that expressed in the spiritual “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen, Nobody Knows but Jesus.”

During his New Haven years he married a woman who shared his spiritual interests and aspirations. However, after the birth of three children and under the pressure of a series of administrative posts in academia, their marriage began to suffer.

He had been trying to develop faith out of his experiences of beauty and that ultimately had failed. Now two events temporarily restored his faith, one the birth of his first child, the second the death of his mother.

Much later, he accepted the deanship of the graduate school at Princeton, a prestigious post but one caused him much anguish. This job seemed to him “a disastrous success.” He felt his spirit was dying.

Next came an extramarital affair: he left his wife and entered into serious crisis. “I threw up every morning,” he recalls, and “my spirit was bleeding all over the place.”

Eventually, he resigned the deanship and set out on a new path. He has married again and found healing through discovery of the Russian Orthodox Church. Its icons, its liturgy, and its spirituality feeds his soul. He also discovered “Souls in Motion,” a Harlem-based community of caring people who were reach-ing out to those in need.

Many more details, omitted here, fill out the story of this spiritual seeker who has found both forgiveness and a new life. His first wife and he have sought and received one another’s forgiveness –this year, for the first time since their se-paration, they celebrated Christmas together.

Ultimately, says Professor Raboteau, “I realized that a community of love has surrounded me my whole life.” His personal saga of sin, suffering, and redemption belongs to the great tradition of life stories told by people who have come through turmoil to discover God more deeply.

Richard Griffin

Krister Stendahl, the retired Lutheran bishop of Stockholm, has a wide reputation among theologians for his knowledge of the Bible. During his years as professor and dean at Harvard Divinity School, he provided guidance to a generation of young scholars and leaders of religious communities. Though now officially retired from academia and from church administration, he continues to offer spiritual inspiration to the many people whom he meets.

Recently Bishop Stendahl gave me for this column a copy of a small book he has written about the Holy Spirit. Entitled “Energy for Life,” this pock-et-sized volume delivers much meaningful reflection on the work of the divine Spirit in human life. Its subtitle, “Come Holy Spirit – Renew the Whole Creation,” uses the words of a prayer for the book’s framework.

As the author explains in his preface, he deliberately chose the word “energy.” “When I tried to answer the question how I personally experience the Holy Spirit, then the first and clearest answer had to be: as energy.”

Commenting on the prayer “Come, Holy Spirit,” Bishop Stendahl notes the oddity of asking for a divine coming when the Spirit is already within human hearts. Rather, he suggests, “it is .  .  . we who should come, open up to, become aware of, the power of the Spirit.”

The author sees the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the threefold character of God along with God’s oneness, as basic to Christianity. Far from being a frill, this teaching has an importance to the faith of Christians that remains central. Bishop Stendahl finds the Trinity vital to his own life.

Here is how he sees this teaching at work: “My faith badly needs to be challenged by the Trinity, by the mystery that rescues me from picturing God in all too human form.” To the bishop, this serves as a reminder that the divine cannot be reduced to human images. The Spirit reminds us that, ultimately, God is above all that we can conceive.

This understanding of the Spirit also frees us from an understanding of God based merely on gender. The author observes that in Greek the Spirit is “it”; in Hebrew, the Spirit is “she.” In both instances the Spirit cannot be made into our own human image.

Turning toward the book of Genesis, Bishop Stendahl sees the Spirit at work in the creation of the whole world and also of human beings. We humans have responsibility for two kinds of actions toward the world. First, we are called upon to exercise dominion over other creatures, and second, we are to keep and take care of them.

The first function, control over created things, we have tended in modern times to overemphasize. The author suggests that we need to balance that approach with tender loving care for all creation. That will move us to keep our rivers and oceans from being polluted and our land from ruinous overdevelopment. Nature, as the Spirit of God teaches us, is too precious for wasteful plunder.

The Holy Spirit, seen as the energy that repairs and renews the world, works through all people of good will. Thus no religious group can claim ex-clusive power to achieve God’s plan. Krister Stendahl, a Christian bishop, puts it this way: “It is the blasphemy of blasphemies to think that only what is done in the church, by the church, and through the church – and/or by and through Christians – can be of God and all else is wrong and destructive.”

The earliest Christian community, a gathering marked by both unity and diversity, shows the creative power of the Spirit. For Bishop Stendahl, the varie-ty of spiritual gifts flows from a sharing in the one Spirit. This variety does not damage but enhances community.

What makes this happen is love that respects everyone. “This is not just tolerance, but a positive embracing of the other in the awareness that it is those who have different gifts and visions who can enrich me and our common community.”

This column calls attention to only a few of the rich insights found in this little book  Fuller appreciation of Bishop Stendahl’s writing would require more space and further analysis. Interested readers can order “Energy for Life” from Paraclete Press in Brewster, Massachusetts (508) 255-4685.

Richard Griffin

If you were to recommend to Oprah Winfrey one spiritual book published in the twentieth century for her to push on her television show, what would it be? Philip Za-leski, Lecturer in Religion at Smith College, has a book to suggest, though one not familiar to me.

He was recently asked by the publishing  house, HarperCollins, to choose the one hundred most outstanding such books. Wisely, he assembled a group of prominent advisors who helped him with the task. Their list makes fascinating reading in itself.

The one book that Professor Zaleski would choose from among the one hundred was written by a French woman, Simone Weil. Called “Waiting for God,” this spiritual classic “offers an inspiring message of hope for the future,” as Zaleski says. I have not read the book myself but plan to do so on the strength of this recommendation.

Other books among the ten most often suggested by Professor Zaleski and his advisory group are Dorothy Day’s, “The Long Loneliness,” Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” Martin Luther King’s, “I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World,” and Teilhard de Chardin’s, “The Phenomenon of Man.”

These works I have read and would enthusiastically recommend to readers. How-ever, those who read Teilhard de Chardin must be prepared for a challenge. This French Jesuit priest-scientist had a highly original vision of the spiritual world that owes much to his field of anthropology. A new translation from the French original has just appeared done by the Boston-area scholar, Sarah Appleton-Weber.

Some favorite authors of mine have also been included. The Trappist monk Tho-mas Merton appears for his “Seeds of Contemplation” and also for his “Seven Storey Mountain,” a book that had a big impact on me when I was twenty.

I welcome the inclusion of two of my favorite Jewish spiritual writers. Martin Buber is listed for his collection, “Tales of the Hasidim,” a work I frequently consult for stories both charming and spiritually profitable.

Also Rabbi Abraham Heschel makes the list for two of his books. One of them, “The Sabbath,” speaks to me as a person who appreciates the spiritual power in having a sacred day once a week.

Another favorite author listed here is Graham Greene for his “The Power and the Glory,” a novel that centers on a whiskey priest who manages to serve God and God’s people despite his failings as a person. The same author’s “The End of the Affair,” a cur-rent Hollywood film, could also have been chosen.

I also relish the southern writer Flannery O’Connor whose short novel “Wise Blood” is included. Presenting often bizarre characters, she shows divine grace breaking through the world of flawed people.

Two other works that much influenced me earlier in life were Gandhi’s memoir, “My Experiments with Truth” and the Swiss psychologist Jung’s, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections.” The great Indian apostle of non-violence taught me the value of peaceful protest and the inner search for truth. Jung helped me to pay attention to dreams and sift them for their meaning in my life.

An author not included who has a large following at the present time is Henri Nouwen. A Dutch priest who died two years ago, Fr. Nouwen wrote a series of books that have given inspiration to a great many people who take  the spiritual life seriously. Among those works I can recommend my favorite – “Aging: the Fulfillment of Life.” It may well be that the cult of Fr. Nouwen will grow during coming decades and something of his will be included on future lists.

I also find myself returning often to Frederick Buechner, a writer based in Vermont and Florida, who has published thirty books, many of them works of spiritual depth. His most recent, “The Eyes of the Heart,” is a work filled with hope despite the grief experienced by him and so many others.

Many of the other writers on the list deserve honorable mention in the spiritual history of the century just past. C. S. Lewis, Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, Pope John XXII,  Pope John Paul II, and T. S. Eliot are all included.

For the reader interested in pursuing spiritual life, here is God’s plenty. The list can be found online (perhaps at your public library) at www.harpercollins.com/imprints/harper_sanfrancisco/spiritbooks.htm. [link no longer active]

Richard Griffin

“I feel rewarded by those to whom I do ministry.” That’s what a retired woman active in a church in Lady Lake, Florida told me two weeks ago. The occasion was my visit to speak at her parish about aging and spirituality.

This woman, Marie by name, is one of an astonishing six hundred registered lay people who have signed up for ministry in the parish. And the number of distinct minis-tries in that place also amazed me, fifty in all. They range all the way from reaching our to people with AIDS to making rosary beads for people to use at prayer.

Marie appreciates the way people respond to her volunteer work. “There’s always someone to pat you on the back and say you did a good job,” she said with enthusiasm.

People like Marie make me feel justified in my constant message to retirees. I like to tell them that the best thing about retirement is that it gives you a chance to tend to your soul. Stepping out of the world of full-time paid employment presents a golden op-portunity for spiritual development.

It perhaps sounds like a cliché by now, but another woman says of her work as a lay minister, “How much more I gain from this experience than I ever give!” It lends meaning to her life in retirement to feel that what she does freely is so valued.

The volunteer lay ministers whom I met during my visit do not just reach out to others. They also are serious about prayer and other spiritual exercises. Hundreds of them come to church every morning to begin the day by  turning toward God and offering praise and expressing their needs. This inner disposition of heart goes hand in hand with their active ministry.

The pastor of their church strongly encourages this ministry by lay people. In fact, he takes pride in having so many collaborators working with him. He has enough wisdom to see that he could not do it all by himself. He also presumably recognizes a special value in the exercise of the lay priesthood.

A young man who is employed as a religious educator for the parish assured me that most strangers who come to that church feel comfortable being responded to by lay people. That makes out of step a man who approached the parish one day and asked to see a priest. It just happened that no priest was available at that time. “What has our church come to,” the man said as he walked away shaking his head.

I would bet, however, that if this man were to allow himself to talk with lay staff members and volunteers he would go away happy with  their readiness to respond to his needs.

Another woman with whom I discussed ministry told of stereotypes held even by old people themselves about their age peers.  When she announced to a friend ten years older than she that she was going to a retirement community, that friend said: “I can’t believe that you’re moving there with all those old people.” Clearly the older woman did not realize the opportunities that her friend would find for ministry to others.

The residents of the retirement community that I visited spoke approvingly of a new means of staying open to the larger world. That new communication device is email. A man named Milton told me, “It’s shrinking the world.” He talks to people in Japan and other distant places. When he and his contact do not speak the same language, they simply wave to one another (don’t ask me how). It seems as if email has a spiritual potential that some pioneers have already used to the advantage of their souls.

Speaking of the ministerial ferment in her church, a woman named Chris said, “I really think that the Holy Spirit is at work in this. Seventy years old is young today.  Some younger people have no idea of the productivity that is possible in old age.” By “productivity,” she clearly meant the work involved in ministry rather than simply being busy or working for pay.

To judge by contact with this particular church, I wonder if some older people are not pointing the way toward new possibilities for both their own fulfillment and the building up of the spiritual community.

Richard Griffin

“Janet Taylor” is an admirable person who wants to become what she calls “a self-actualized human being.” By that term she means a person who takes spirituality seriously and relies on herself to achieve growth in spirit. The religious tradition of her upbringing was vague and inadequate and in the effort to find herself, during her years in college, she read widely and experimented with various spiritual disciplines

Janet’s fictitious name stands for a real person described in a new book “Finding Your Religion”  by Rev. Scotty McLennan, Tufts University chaplain. He owes some of his reputation to the comic strip “Doonesbury” drawn by Scotty McLennan’s college roomate, Gary Trudeau.

The Doonesbury character, Rev. Scott Sloan, gently parodies the real-life minister. As Rev. McLennan humorously complains, “Gary’s helped me become a living joke.”

Recently, at Harvard Divinity School, McLennan was joined by three others in a panel discussion centered on his new book.  The discussion focused on the topic “Why Spirituality Needs Religion,” a view that the author presents strongly in the book.

With some variations, the theologian Harvey Cox also agreed with this position. Writer James Carroll, however, first argued that spirituality does not in fact need religion before tempering this view with reasons for mutual support between the two.

Rev. McLennan stressed three reasons for the interdependence of the spirituality and religion. First, in the spiritual quest, everyone needs travelling companions. The search for truth is so difficult that you require the support of other people.

Secondly, you also need discipline, and that comes from the religious traditions of the world. Without discipline, you tend to go from one thing to another, the way “Janet Taylor” has done.

And thirdly, commitment to a social ideal also requires the support of a religious community. McLennan cited Martin Luther King, Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, and asked how far they could have got without that support. Yes, we must always work against “the dark side of religion,” he conceded, but religion has always been the breeding ground of great-souled leaders.

Then Rev. McLennan also argued that faith is not something that comes to a per-son neatly packaged, once and for all. Rather it develops through various stages, from childish dependence through independence until one arrives at the interdependence of maturity. The support of religion is needed at each stage.

Religion is also needed to support prophets such as the leaders mentioned earlier. They must rely on the resources supplied by religion, such as sacred texts, methods of prayer, and communal worship. Without these, the prophet would be left entirely on his or her own and become ineffective.

Novelist, columnist and memoirist James Carroll has been much influenced, he said, by the experience of his children who show little interest in organized religion but are clearly spiritual people. Though he himself says “I regard my faith as a Christian as the greatest gift of my life,” he recognizes that you don’t need religion to beloved by God. Nor do you need it to love your neighbor or to work for justice.

This being said, however, Mr. Carroll then acknowledges the advantages of religion. It gives us a language that is important in the search for God. Beyond that, it provides a culture for that same search. And it offers access to a community of faith that transcends place and time. It also gives us a way to think about sin, he added.

In support of the main position, Harvey Cox suggested the importance of what he called “the landing points” along the route of spiritual development. The points are supplied by religion. He also argued that “a group of individuals are not going to accomplish much in the world.” Rather, you need a community of faith to support efforts to change the world toward greater justice and peace.

So, on balance, the conviction that spirituality needs religion emerged as the clear winner. “Janet Taylor”  would be well advised, therefore, to avail herself of the riches of religious tradition as she makes her way toward a more satisfying spiritual life. At least, this would be the prevailing counsel of Rev. McLennon and his supporters.

Richard Griffin