Are women better than men?  Do they have spiritual qualities that make them more fully human than men?

Crime statistics would seem to indicate so. You don’t find women convicted of violent felonies in nearly the numbers that men exhibit. And precious few women have ever begun wars or led others in the slaughter of their fellow human beings.

In a recent lecture, a Catholic theologian, Edward Vasek, suggested reasons for favoring women over men. He sees them as being more spiritual and loving than most of mankind. To back up this opinion he cited two unlikely authorities.

One is John Paul II, Bishop of Rome and Pope. The other is Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican office responsible for Catholic orthodoxy.

The main reason why the pope especially values women is that he sees them as more directly pointed toward “being for the other.” They have a more spontaneous tendency to love and serve other people, a tendency that goes beyond what most men show. “Perhaps more than men,” the pope writes, “women acknowledge the person, because they see persons with their hearts.”

John Paul thus envisions women as those who “help to make human relations more honest and authentic.” Because of their special talent for human relations and spiritual values, the pope adds, “society owes much to the genius of women.”

Coming from a man, this kind of praise must, unfortunately, be looked at critically. Often it may contain a hypocrisy or sentimentality that may render it suspect. When it issues from a man who has ruled that ordination to the priesthood is out of bounds for women, it will always lack credibility to some extent, however sound the thinking behind his words.

Though this credibility problem tends to overshadow his teaching, the pope’s statements about women’s spiritual stature find ample support in the real world. Female human beings are generally more contemplative than males. They have a heartfelt orientation toward silence, receptivity, prayer, and interiority that distinguishes their gender.

Cardinal Ratzinger, for his part, sees in Mary, the mother of Jesus, a model of femininity. She possesses qualities that are valuable for both church and society. These qualities include “listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise, and waiting.” Continuing, he writes: “While these traits should be characteristic of every baptized person, women in fact live them with particular intensity and naturalness.”

The theologian referred to above, Edward Vasek, attributes the spiritual preeminence of women to their being receptive to God. Without discounting the value of men, he sees women as helping to civilize them, to make men more open to non-pragmatic values.

To him, it is important to recognize the difference between the sexes. “Their brains are different; so is their cardio-vascular system,” he says.  At the same time, however, he insists on the basic unity of male and female persons, under God who created us both the same and different.

Father Vasek endorses Cardinal Ratzinger’s hope that women will continue to reject being power hungry and aggressive, as so many men are. The special sensitivity that women have is a gift that is worth cultivating.

American society stands in desperate need of the qualities associated with contemplation. The tendency to be caught up in feverish activity detracts from our capacity to appreciate the fullness of human life. If we do not find time to wonder at the mystery of it all, we are missing something precious.

American life is so noisy and pressured that it makes moments of repose often impossible. But spirituality remains largely off limits to anyone who cannot ever be silent and listen to his or her inner self.

Perhaps the aging of the American population will make a difference. Of the change that happens with many men after retirement, the psychologist David Gutmann writes: “A significant sex-role turnover takes place, in that men begin to live out  .  .  .  the ‘femininity’ that was previously repressed in the service of productivity.”

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” This is the sexist complaint of Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. When it comes to spirituality, however, perhaps we can ask the opposite: Why can’t a man be more like a woman?

Richard Griffin

On a brilliant June morning, I departed from the cemetery along with a crowd of other mourners, leaving my friend Bob’s body behind. His coffin would be buried sometime later in a plot next to his mother’s grave.

Since that time, I have been thinking about Bob, his life and his death. That he died only a few weeks after discovering a fatal disease still shocks me and his many friends. We had thought we had more time with him than that.

Understand that Bob and I were friends for 61 years, ever since we entered high school together. We had stayed in touch all during that time, bound as we were by ties of respect and affection. Also we shared spiritual values that became even more important as we aged.

I feel Bob to be still present to me despite his death, but I continually revolve in my mind and heart how that is true. In this contemplation, I have found help from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who was executed by the Nazis in 1945.

In his Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer wrote the following words to his wife: “Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through.

“That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; God doesn’t fill it, but on the contrary, keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain.”

This passage formed part of a memorial service for another friend, a priest-psychiatrist whose death I also recently mourned. It was read by another physician who also values Bonhoeffer’s words. For me, the words carried a vital message as I thought about Bob.

I find at least two important ideas in this passage from the German theologian’s letters. First, that God does not fill the gap that is left in our hearts when a loved one dies. Asserting that God does so is too facile; that would be God taking away from us something humanly valuable, the empty place in our hearts that nothing can fill.

And, secondly, that God does us a favor in keeping that place empty. It’s God’s way of helping us preserve the bond with the one we love. At the cost of allowing us to feel pain, God lets us experience a vital absence.

This approach goes against conventional wisdom and the way we think about death. Bonhoeffer’s message could make us think differently about people who have lost a friend to death. Of course, their feelings of loss will normally diminish in intensity over time but these emotions can still serve as signs of spiritual value.

In this way, the absence turns into a kind of presence. We are continually reminded of our loved one, of that person’s place in our life. So long as the gap remains, we feel him or her to belong to us.

That is the way I am now feeling about my friend Bob. Though his bodily presence has disappeared, he remains present to me spiritually. Bonhoeffer is right: the gap abides and God is not taking it away.

Does Bob still feel that way about me?  This question brings us further into the realm of mystery. The very act of asking it plunges the questioner deeper into reality than we can handle.

Yes, I believe that my friend can still hold me in affection. Yet, I have no evidence for this nor do I want such proof. Rather, I leave it to the realm of hope rather than science. That is the way Bob would have approached the question, had I been the one to die first.

To me, Bob’s life was worth so much, was so precious that I cannot imagine it lost. The gap that I feel serves for me as testimony of my friend’s ongoing life. The convergence of faith, hope, and love that we shared suggests a communion of friendship that abides.

Richard Griffin

A visit to a wake or funeral always stirs in me the ultimate question: What lies in store for us beyond the grave? Though I often see mourners who give every indication of ignoring the question, I cannot do so myself. This greatest of mysteries never fails to provoke my wonder.

Sometimes one receives from people in their last days indications of what might be the experience of living after death. Such recently came to my attention when friends revealed what two women said when they were dying.

The first, Daria, described what she was going through by the single word “surreal.” I do not have details that might enable me to judge what she meant by this expression. But I suspect that it was for her a premonition of what death would bring.

She would seem to have had some kind of vision of a reality different from that of our everyday world. It was apparently an experience of awe that promised something that she had never known previously.

Amazingly, the second woman, Marj, used the same expression: “this is a surreal experience.”  As if in confirmation of this awesome sequence of inner events, she then added: “I feel as though this is happening to someone else.”

But she found another metaphor in her love of sailing. Nothing pleased her so much as heading out on her boat accompanied by friends, with the wind in her face and herself sitting at the helm. A charming photo on her funeral program shows her sitting cross-legged, on the boat, the ocean in the background, a floppy hat protecting her from the sun, and a broad smile on her face.

Shortly before her death, she said to a priest who was ministering to her: “I hope heaven is another ocean.” These words struck me as a beautiful statement of what the next life could be. For Marj, it featured the activity that she had most favored in life.

Presumably, heaven would bring all the beauty of water, wind, sand, stars, the company of fellow seafarers and whatever else made for pleasure on earth. Except now, it would be unimaginably enhanced.

My book group this month is reading My Antonia, a classic novel by the 20th century American writer Willa Cather. In it she tells the story of a young boy, Jim, who has been sent from Virginia to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. The farm they run is isolated from human society, but it brings the boy close to nature.

One warm day Jim lies down in the middle of the family garden, to rest and take in the surroundings. “I kept as still as I could,” he says. “Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more.”

He continues: “I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become part of something entire, whether it is sun or air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”

As a reader, I find myself skeptical that a young boy would have such deep reflections about death. However, I especially identify with becoming part of goodness and knowledge, part of something complete and great. Transposed into more standard religious terms, this description would seem to be expressive of union with God.

A writer friend, Fred Buechner, approaches the mystery from a different perspective. He detects intimations of immortality as he tells of answering a question that his mother, in old age, posed to him out of the blue. “Do you really believe anything happens after you die?”

In one of his responses, her son writes about the way life feels to him: “It feels as though, at the innermost heart of it, there is Holiness, and that we experience all the horrors that go on both around us and within us as horrors rather than as just the way the cookie crumbles because, in our own innermost hearts, we belong to Holiness.”

Amen.

Richard Griffin

When I took religious vows, a colleague sent me a poem that he had written to commemorate the occasion. A person of considerable literary talent, David was able to reach into the significance of this ceremony and express its meaning beautifully.

A few introductory words made clear that David intended the poem “for a blessing.” The main theme of this 17-line poem, the original still preserved in my files, is to ask questions about the effort of the will to “fix itself in good.” David suggests that one should pray for “that last and certain knowledge of the heart’s/Renewed surrender to untrammeled grace.”

These words have remained important to me over half a century because they give evidence not only of a spiritual ideal but also of a precious relationship. First formed when David and I were apprentices in the Jesuit novitiate, ours can be called a spiritual friendship, a bond that has strengthened the values held by both of us.

My friend David and I do not often see one another now because we live too far apart. However, when we do get together, it becomes immediately obvious that the spiritual bond between us remains strong. The passage of years has not damaged the affection that we feel for each other and the serious interest in spirituality that has always marked our friendship.

Spiritual friendships have a long and valued history in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and no doubt in others as well. In the Hebrew Bible, David and Jonathan show forth some of the beauty in such a relationship. So does the friendship of Ruth and Naomi in the Book of Ruth.

In later times, St. Augustine writes about the subject with typical insight. Of his friendship with a man named Alypius, he wrote in 394 or 395: “Anyone who knows us both would say that he and I are distinct individuals in body only, not in mind.”

Two centuries later, Gregory the Great called this kind of friend the “guardian of one’s soul” (custos animae, in Latin). Such a definition, however, suggests a level of level of intimacy that is rare.

Spiritual friendship differs from the general kind by having as link the sharing of ideals. It also often features the exchange of experiences in the search for God. Soul brothers and sisters find satisfaction in helping one another in the ongoing pursuit of ultimate meaning.

In times of struggle, this bond becomes especially important. When we tire of keeping to our spiritual ideals and feel tempted to abandon the interior life, then we need the support of at least one other person.

Exchanging experiences in prayer can be part of it. You feel the need to complain of distractions and temptations, for instance, and reach out to your friend.

For not a few people, however, the big problem is not having such a friend. How is it possible to find someone who can become one’s soul brother or sister?

One suggestion is to find a community where people like you come together. Of course, church, synagogue, mosque or other place of worship might provide potential friends if you relate to such. Discovering a prayer group has given me friends who have graced me with various spiritual benefits.

Such a friendship should be seen as a gift. We can ask God to bestow it on us though, in most instances, to be so gifted one must reach out to others.

For those who are truly fortunate in marriage, they may find in their spouse a true spiritual friend. When that goes together with marital love, it is a precious combination. Then one does not need to reach out far to find vital friendship built on spiritual values, because it remains close at hand. Unfortunately, the real world does not feature this ideal marriage often enough.

For Christians, of course, Jesus remains the great practitioner of friendship. He called his disciples friends and seems to have had a particularly close personal relationship to St. John.

Jesus also provided a definition of friendship at its most sublime: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Inspired by these words, more than a few people, throughout recorded history, have made this sacrifice of themselves out of love for others.

Richard Griffin

In another space, I recently wrote about John Kerry as a Catholic. In response, a reader contacted me to express his indignation at my having suggested that the Democratic nominee for president takes his religious faith seriously.

Not so, protested the reader, claiming that Senator Kerry never mentions God, does not go to church, and has a faith that is entirely bogus. A follow-up conversation with the reader produced nothing but more invective against the nominee.

Of course, I respect the right of every person to vote as he sees fit. Nonetheless, I feel troubled by this reader’s intemperate reaction to my carefully expressed appraisal of a public figure’s stance toward God.

In that column I had suggested that Kerry’s religious faith was among his greatest assets because it can lead him to value the dimensions of life that go beyond the material and pragmatic and to judge the actions he takes by a higher standard than the merely expedient. The same can be said of the faith of George W. Bush.

The extent to which religion has figured in this year’s election for president has surprised some observers. And yet, Americans are known as among the most religious people in the world, with two-thirds answering a Pew poll by saying that religion plays a very important part in their lives.

Unfortunately, much of the discussion about religious issues during the past year has proven unbalanced and divisive. The reader who shared his views with me did not help: he was just plain wrong about the facts and, it seems, highly prejudiced.

From the perspective of spirituality, his statements seem especially regrettable because they reflect rash judgments about another person. How can anyone assert that the faith of another person is hypocritical, unless that person’s actions demonstrate clear contradictions?

My hope is for this year’s electoral struggles not to leave behind a legacy of religious bitterness. It would be spiritually damaging to this country if ill will among those of different religious views were to take firm hold.

Speaking about my own tradition, I feel concern about the effects of those American Catholic bishops who have threatened John Kerry with a kind of excommunication for supporting legislation permitting abortion. Like many other Catholic politicians, Senator Kerry opposes abortion itself but he considers banning it unwise for fear of unleashing other evils.

This position is awkward but does not deserve being branded sinful. Instead of hurting Kerry at the election booth, it may provoke a backlash among Catholics against those bishops.

There is no single way of being religious. Instead, people have various styles of religious life. Some are comfortable expressing their beliefs openly, while others show more reserve about their faith. Many New Englanders have a sober style of religiosity and shrink from emotional expressions of belief. For people in some other parts of the country, such expression is an integral part of religion.

Life would be dull were we all the same. Though I am myself reserved in religious practice, I have often enjoyed sharing in celebrations that feature exuberant singing, dancing, and outbursts of religious emotion.

But respect for religious diversity is not enough. One cannot assert that, if we are simply tolerant of one another, problems will disappear. Issues like the relationship between church and state, for instance, cannot be easily resolved. To cite just one area of concern, I feel wary of the way that the current administration has implemented the so-called “faith-based initiative.” And, for me, the ongoing disputes about same gender marriage are much less important than the fact of so many children living in poverty, even in America.

I must also confess deep concern when public officials speak as if they have an open telephone line to God. Invoking God as supporting a given policy seems to me a misuse of religion. Especially does this apply when the deity is presented as approving of a war or other grave actions that offend morality.

That so many Americans are religious should be seen as something good. So, too, is our variety of religious thought and practice. Our country is wide enough to accommodate different ways of being religious.

However, we religious folks must also be vigilant enough not to accept false uses of religion that compromise faith and twist it to justify policies and actions that are morally offensive.

Richard Griffin

A friend has shared with me a saying of the Buddha. According to tradition, this great teacher of humankind left these words:  “Every human being is allotted ten thousand portions of joy and ten thousand portions of sorrow.”

Immediately, this saying strikes the hearer as intriguing. It summarizes human life in one sweeping sentence. And yet, the more we hear it, the more we perceive the need for reflection on its meaning.

The first part makes the human heart leap up in exaltation. So much joy, who would not want that?

But then the Buddha balances it by affirming that an equal amount of sorrow awaits us all. This seems like a heavy burden indeed.

Perhaps the wisdom of these words lies in their suggestiveness rather than in their literal truth. They amount to a kind of poetry, not a mere prosaic statement of fact. Accustomed to the factual, we can make the mistake of taking the words as precise instead of suggestive.

Thus the number ten thousand does not reflect an actual count of people’s joys and sorrows but rather stands for “a large amount.”  Everyone has a great many chances at the two, the teacher seems to be saying.

The idea of our being given so many opportunities for joy amounts to a welcome message indeed. However, it makes you wonder about those who are afflicted with long-lasting disease or disability. Can they possibly lay hold of an allotment of joy equal to their grief?

And how about those who die young? A friend who died recently at 45 after three years of agonizing illness; can she have known as much joy as sorrow?

Actually, the answer may be yes. She was a person who knew how to celebrate life even when she knew her time on earth would soon end. She found joy in her husband and two young children, along with her legion of dear friends.

A central difference between shares of sorrow and joy, it seems to me, is that we never seek out sorrow, but joy requires an effort of us. It is a gift to which we must open our hearts. Spiritually gifted, my friend knew how to welcome joy into her life despite her narrow prospects for surviving her disease.

Were I asked to suggest ways of opening ourselves up to joy, I might list three.

First, take care of your relationships. Make sure you are not at enmity with anyone, especially members of your immediate and extended family. It is hard to imagine feeling joy in one’s heart while harboring ill will toward other people.

Nothing compares in importance with this first suggestion. Relating to the everyday people in our lives with respect and fairness goes far to make possible a joyful heart. This enables the Spirit to send gifts of joy to us like unexpected flashes of light.

If we can go further and treat others with love and affection, that behavior brightens our chance for joy. Seeing those close to us as gifts that we have received can enhance our lives no end.

A second suggestion: find something to do that you love. Too few of us love the work for which we get paid but, if we can arrange it, that employment can become a source of joy.

If this proves not possible, then we can look for activities aside from the workplace to bring us pleasure.

A friend of mine, recently retired, spoke to me last week with anticipation of a trip to South Africa where he and his wife will observe birds not seen in North America. Birding is not for everyone, nor can everyone travel so far, but everyone can find something that provokes enthusiasm.

Thirdly, cultivate the inner peace that leads to joy. If we dare be silent sometimes, away from the intrusive noises of our society, we will increase our chances of developing a peaceful heart that is the best environment for joy.

In my tradition, joy is seen as one fruit of the Holy Spirit. She, the Spirit of God, is the one who gives this gift that goes so far to make life rich. If this gift becomes our portion, then we may find ourselves better able to deal with the challenges that earthly life always brings.

Richard Griffin

The icon of the Transfiguration shows Jesus in the center, with Moses the lawgiver on his left and the prophet Elijah on his right. These three figures who stand against a golden sky wear long robes, and Jesus is surrounded by a cloud of glory. He raises his right hand in blessing as he reveals his divinity.

Below the three standing figures sprawl Peter, James, and John, the most favored of Jesus’ disciples. They are clearly distraught, overcome by the dazzling show of the Lord’s glory. Unlike the Lord and the two great figures from the Hebrew Bible, they do not have haloes around their heads.

The icon described here bears the Greek title, The Metamorphosis, meaning the transformation. It celebrates the event in sacred history whereby the Lord Jesus reveals something of his divinity so as to strengthen his disciples before his forthcoming passion and death. This particular icon also celebrates the connection that Jesus has with Moses, representing the Law, and Elijah standing for the Prophets.

Icons like this one play a large part in Eastern Christianity. Members of the Orthodox and also the eastern Catholic churches make these images an important part of their spirituality. They draw inspiration from gazing on these works of art, allowing them to feed their souls.

Christians of the West tend to pay less attention to icons and leave them out of account in their spiritual life. Some, however, do find them helpful in developing prayerful patterns of daily living. For one day, at least, a group from my parish church took part in a day of prayer using the icon of the Transfiguration as a starting point.

For this occasion, a replica of this splendid icon was mounted on a stand for all to see. A lighted candle burned before it as a sign of spiritual presence. And the group of parishioners, following the lead of one of their priests, began by answering each part of a litany with the response “Let us pray to the Lord.”

This litany, or repetitive prayer of petition, came from the Byzantine liturgy that is used by many churches of the East. A recorded version of the Our Father in the Russian language was played, heightening an atmosphere conducive to prayer.

The first presenter, Ana-Maria, who in her professional life is a psychoanalyst, began her discussion by stating: “This icon is an image of you and me.” By saying this she meant that Christianity calls each person to share in God’s own life. Jesus, revealing his divinity, shows how people of faith can be raised above the human level and partake of the divine.

Ana-Maria acknowledged being sometimes “overwhelmed by life in general and by the mystery of God.” But she sees this experience of awe as an appropriate response to the glory suggested in the icon. For her, the Transfiguration also requires of believers that they share with each other their appreciation of the chance to live God’s own life.

Father Jim, in his presentation, rejected the idea of Christianity as enabling people to be good. Rather, this faith centers on the call to a transfigured life. “Don’t shoot merely for goodness,” he exhorted his listeners, “but for transfiguration.”

In looking at the icon, he suggested, one sees the purpose of life, namely to be transfigured, to be divinized. That is what God wants of human beings, according to basic Christianity. Another way of seeing it is that God calls everyone to become holy in the pattern of the glorified Jesus as shown in the icon.

Becoming transfigured is nothing humans can accomplish by themselves, however. Echoing Christian tradition, Father Jim stressed the role of the Spirit of God. “The Holy Spirit is the one who transfigures,” he said.

For those who follow the Christian tradition, spirituality refers ultimately to the Holy Spirit. It is not something generated by humans but instead depends on the activity of God in the human heart. One becomes a spiritual person through the loving initiative of the Spirit of God.

The people who took part in their parish’s day of recollection left after celebrating the Eucharist and reinvigorating their commitment to the transfigured Jesus. They returned to daily life with the image of the holy icon in their mind’s eye and with a renewed sense of their calling as Christians.

Richard Griffin