Responding to a Spiritual Crisis

“What a great time to be a Catholic!” said my friend, jauntily but clearly using words laced with irony. She was referring to the crisis of confidence that many members of her church are feeling now.  

Revelations about widespread sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston have shaken the trust long placed in the leadership of the church. As many as 70 members of the clergy have been accused of these crimes and the cardinal archbishop, by his own admission, has been guilty of placing some of these priests in positions where they could continue doing grievous harm.

Outrage has been the response of many church members. Parents, especially, have felt betrayed by the priests’ criminal actions that have damaged their children. But those not directly affected also feel deeply resentful about the crimes and confess a chagrin and embarrassment at events that have so shockingly come to light.

Among the most deeply discomfited are those priests who have remained faithful shepherds of their parishes. These members of the clergy, the great majority, have suffered pain at what has been done by their fellow priests. They feel that the good name of the priesthood has been dragged through mud and that the harm done to their profession is incalculable. One told friends recently: “Anyone would have to be crazy to enter the seminary now.”

How can members of the church respond spiritually in this time of severe crisis? What spiritual guidelines exist to help Catholics and others to deal with the mix of emotions they are experiencing?

First, righteous anger is surely justified in response to the terrible sins committed against defenseless children. Jesus himself, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, spoke angrily about such crimes, suggesting that their perpetrators would face dire punishment.

Secondly, church members have a right to hold their religious leaders accountable for failures to protect them against such crimes. By their protest against such negligence they affirm the ideals of a church committed to the teachings of Jesus.

Third, the crisis can be recognized as a time for important changes in the church. In fact, the archbishop has already announced some changes but others, not originating with him, may be needed. Many Americans other than Catholic clergy have shamefully abused children, but the history of this kind of abuse by ordained members of the church raises basic questions about recruitment, admission policies, and the exclusively male identity of those responsible for ministry.

As for the spirituality of church members, some truths need to be reemphasized. One must be wary of hypocrisy, not only in others who hold positions of sacred trust, but also in oneself. To maintain spiritual balance, we must be ready to expect others to be always less than perfect and sometimes much less. At their best, spiritual people will recognize their own temptations to betray the precious ideals of the faith they espouse.

It is spiritually important also not to place ultimate faith and trust in human beings, but in God. Jesus recommends this, in St. Mark’s Gospel, when he says to a young man, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”

Catholics, like those of other traditions, belong to a community of faith made up of people whose conduct is exemplary, and of others who behave very badly. In one of his parables about a sower, Jesus indicates that among the good seeds in the field, weeds will be found as well.

The current crisis also calls for maintaining peace of soul. For people who have been violated, that will be very difficult, if not impossible, while they suffer the effects of betrayal. However, even for them it is spiritually important to pray for interior peace and gifts of divine consolation. In time, they may also ask God for the gift of being able to forgive those who have done them grievous harm.

Evil remains a mystery even to the most profound thinkers. In those who have aspired to the noblest ideals of service to God and the community, evil is especially baffling. In the face of such betrayal it may help to remember that God alone deserves absolute trust and that we must continually search our own hearts and pray for the strength to live honestly with fidelity to other people.

Richard Griffin

Assisi Assembly

An event that occurred on January 24 deserves much more attention than it has thus far received. On that day, in Assisi, the town in Italy associated with Saint Francis, representatives of virtually all the world’s religions came together to speak out for peace and nonviolence. All of them had traveled to this picturesque hill town from Rome on a special “peace train.”

Pope John Paul II had planned this “Day of Prayer for Peace” in order to get backing for his conviction that there is “no religious goal that can possibly justify the use of violence of man against man.”

The leaders, some 250 in all, joined together in saying: “Violence never again! Terrorism never again! In the name of God, may every religion bring upon the earth justice and peace, forgiveness and life, love.”

As photos taken of the event suggest, it must have been impressive to see these leaders sitting in rows alongside their host, John Paul II. Garbed in long robes of various colors, with most of them wearing headdresses of differing design and hue, these guests displayed the diversity of the world’s faiths.

Bringing them together was a major accomplishment in itself. Getting the agreement of all of them added something special to that first achievement. Pope John Paul clearly “was calling in credits,” as one journalist reported, credits built up over his entire 24-year tenure as Bishop of Rome.

Individual passages of the joint statement were read by individual leaders, each in that person’s own language. Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople led the way by reading the words known as the Golden Rule: “Do to others what you would have them do to you.”

Bhaia Sahisbji Singh, the Sikh representative, read the assembly’s promise to educate people to “mutual respect and esteem.”

A French rabbi, Samuel René Sirat, speaking in Hebrew, read the passage that calls on leaders of nations to create “a world of solidarity and peace based on justice.”

The Buddhist, Nichiko Niwano, speaking in Japanese, called for “solidarity and understanding between peoples” and cautioned about technology that “exposes the world to a growing risk of destruction and death.”

While their joint statement was being read out, the delegates held in their hands lamps fashioned for the occasion by an artist nun. At the end of the general announcement each person placed his lamp on a tripod that will remain in the basilica of St. Francis as a memorial of the historic meeting.

As suggested by the names already cited here, the extent of representation from the religions of the world was truly impressive. Among those gathered together were thirty Muslim leaders coming from Middle Eastern countries – –  Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt – – as well as from Pakistan. In a break from previous policy, a representative from the Patriarch of Moscow attended. So did the Patriarch of Constantinople, along with Sikhs, Confucians, Buddhists, animists, and others.

Jewish leaders and Protestants took part along with the Zoroastrians and Hindus. After the general assembly, the distinct religious groups came together separately to offer their own prayers.

The Assisi meeting was obviously meant to counteract spiritually the horrific attacks of September 11. The pope’s intention, ratified by so many other leaders from around the world, was to refute in particular the terrorist view that justifies violence in the name of religion. Unanimously, religious groups, large and small, reject this view as a perversion of true religious values.

Holding the meeting in the town where St. Francis was born, lived and died was clearly the best place possible. After all, he is a saint universally admired for his commitment to peace among people and with the world of living things. His life demonstrated how a person, because of loving God, can love other people and all of creation.

If this spirit, manifest that day in Assisi, can take permanent hold among the world’s religions, then the meeting will prove to have been an historic milestone indeed. A point often made is that world peace can only come about if the religions of the world are at peace with one another. If so, this event has significance for the future of our global society.

Richard Griffin

A Good Suicide?

On January 2nd, Chester Nimitz, Jr. and his wife, Joan Nimitz, committed suicide in the continuing care retirement community where they resided. They overdosed on sleeping pills and thus brought to an end long lives filled with adventure.

The jointly planned and carefully executed suicide of the Nimitz spouses has deservedly received widespread attention across the country. This action by two people with a famous name raises issues of great spiritual importance.

The husband, Chester Nimitz, Jr., was 86 years old and his wife, Joan, 89. They had been afflicted in recent years with serious ailments that made them wary of a future filled with disability and dependence. With efficiency typical of them, they determined to end their own lives together rather than suffer further illness.

I could never blame anyone for doing what the Nimitzes did. It is easy to understand why they took this drastic action in their old age. Everyone can sympathize with their desire not to experience further illnesses and the progressive loss of control over their own bodies.

But what they did violates my own spiritual values. Their action goes against a life-long ingrained conviction of mine that human destiny is in the hands of God. Of course, some end-of-life choices remain ours to make but, in my view, suicide is not one of them.

Though I could imagine killing myself under extreme duress, doing so would go against my conscience. I would be betraying my instinct never to do violence to the life given me as gift.

In these judgments I freely admit being guided by the basic teachings of my own religious tradition. As a child I was taught that my life came from God who created freely out of love.

Being God’s creature meant to reverence my life and preserve it from harm. As the catechism says, “We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of.”   

My community of faith finds another motive for the sacredness of human life in the redemptive work of Jesus. Through baptism, believers have taken on a new identity and share in the life of Christ.

“You are not your own, you have been bought at a great price,” St. Paul, one of this community’s most eloquent spokesman, affirms. This mystical identification with Christ is what it means to be a Christian at its deepest level.

My spiritual community’s covenant of love with God excludes suicide. Belonging to Christ gives believers a spiritual freedom that extends widely. Ideally it delivers us from the false gods of money, power, and reputation.

But this faith also brings with it certain constraints, one of them being that we do not have the power to determine when we shall live and when we shall die.

That does not mean needing my life artificially extended past any hope of worthwhile living. No one is obliged to prolong his or her life by so-called extraordinary means. It is perfectly acceptable to stop using breathing machines, for example, when patients can no longer benefit from them.

I realize that even some of those who share my tradition may not share my convictions about suicide. When I shared my views of the Nimitz case with some close friends last week, I was surprised to discover that some of them look with favor on what the Nimitzes did.

Though these friends place a high value on our religious tradition, they still would feel free to avert such situations as suffering years of Alzheimer’s or Lou Gehrig’s disease before dying. They also argue that maybe the Church will ultimately change its position on suicide as it did long ago on usury, and has since then on other issues.

Still I regard the suicide of the Nimitzes with deep misgivings. It strikes me as another form of rationalism that clashes with spirituality. Though I admit that some spiritually-minded people might kill themselves rather than face a future of suffering, I still consider their action as out of harmony with a spiritual view of the world.

Hope in God is the bedrock of this worldview, something that I hope will sustain me when my end draws near.

Richard Griffin

Bill, the Street Singer

Asked how he feels about growing old, Bill Hamill invokes one of his many  sayings: “Whom the gods love grow young, they don’t grow old.” Then, playfully, he adds: “As a man becomes older, he becomes more delectable.”

These upbeat responses typify this 76-year-old street singer of songs primarily from the 1920s to the 1940s. In three-hour stretches, he belts them out to the wonderment of passersby in Harvard Square. His unabashedly in-your-ear  voice, often in high falsetto, carries across the sidewalk to the surroundings.

Six feet tall, 200 pounds, arrayed in red flannel pants, winter boots, green cap down over his forehead, broad face, and two pencil-thin mustachio lines, Bill loves to entertain the passing world. He knows 160 songs by heart and only rarely forgets any of their lyrics.

Students he considers his main target. Of them he says, “I’m bringing a sort of a mirror of what they are doing. They are actually falling in love and I’m bringing love songs. You see them holding hands as they walk by and I’m singing love songs.”

Bill has been performing in the Square for only the last seven years, but singing since he was a boy growing up in nearby Chelsea. When World War II came along, he joined the Navy and was sent to Bethesda, Maryland. After a medical discharge, he went to art school, traveled widely, and then came to Cambridge.

There he met a millionairess who taught him part of his guiding philosophy. “She gave me insight into the fact that what is money compared to love,” he recalls appreciatively. “I wanted love, I wanted art, I didn’t want money,” he adds.

Besides being a romantic, he also shows himself a patriot. The first song he rendered on a cold winter afternoon last week was “America the Beautiful.” Later he drew  “The Star Spangled Banner” from his repertoire and performed it with the same earnestness. When singing, he sheds all inhibition and lets go with abandon, often transfixing those who hear his voice.

Where does he get the chutzpah to set up his equipment on a public sidewalk and sing out so boldly? At the beginning, he confesses having felt “a little bit” embarrassed but, by now, “I’m completely relaxed.” No one harasses him: his Cambridge Arts Council badge, purchased for 40 dollars each year, makes him legit.

Some people like him a lot. A middle-aged woman who did not give her age evaluates Bill enthusiastically, “I think he’s great, I’m a vocalist myself.” Jason., 20-something, offers a less committed evaluation: “He’s something different.”

But Bill does not depend on his reviews. He loves the songs behind the sheet music covers lined up against the wall:  old favorites such as “My Foolish Heart” with Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward; “At the Balalaika” featuring Nelson Eddy and Ilona Massey; “Babes In Arms,” with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland; and “Folks Who Live on the Hill,” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein.

Among the composers Bill likes best, Jerome Kern tops the field. But he puts in a fervent plug for obscure composers who wrote great songs. No one remembers the writer of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” or another WWII song “There’ll  be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover” but they remain outstanding pieces.

After a lifetime of what he calls “running around,” Bill is glad to be settled in his chosen community. “Now I realize there’s no place like home,” he says. “I can be happy and revel right around here without going to the so-called enchanting places that people rave about.”

But he believes in good exercise. This he gets by riding his bike around the Boston area. “I’ve been cycling every day for the past 67 years,” he claims, not without some hyperbole.

He also exercises by pushing his song kit along. This cart comprises his microphone, sound system, and props. In addition to the sheet music covers, these latter include a toy cat and other animals. Assembled in one package on wheels, this material provides him with resistance exercise when he goes back and forth to his apartment some blocks from his performance sites.

As indicated earlier, this flamboyant gentleman trusts to his sayings. He can produce a quote or an original aphorism as commentary on almost any phenomenon. “I’ve studied quotations and proverbs, and the wisdom of the old sages in a concise way,” he explains. However, he adds: “I haven’t studied too much beyond that.”

Sayings about love loom large in his repertoire but they often veer sharply away from the romantic. “There’s a saying, leave women and they follow you, follow them and they leave you.” Interpreting this statement, he applies it to himself: “I’m a real Don Juan, I can do without women.” But then he laughs.

Richard Griffin

Florida Gig

A speaking gig in Florida last weekend has given me contact once more with America’s future. So many people down there have reached age 65 that one gets a glimpse of how the whole country will look in the year 2030. By that time, one in every five of us Americans will have attained that level of longevity.

Certain highlights of my short stay at a church in West Palm Beach stand out boldly. It was impressive to see large numbers of retired men and women come to worship in various degrees of vigor. Some elders obviously enjoyed bustling good health; others displayed bodies in notable disrepair.

I focused with admiration on one couple in particular, she painfully shuffling along hobbled by the effects of stroke, while he cheerfully provided major support, smiling all during his wife’s uncertain progress toward the entrance.

Evidences of such courage buoyed up my spirit. Another retired couple were helping an adult son walk, the latter having been crippled by the effects of a brain tumor. Scenes like these justify what one of the hymns sung in that church calls the world – – “this valley of tears.” Yet I had to admire the way these people struggled with their disabilities.

That is presumably a major reason why they come to church in such large numbers. They want to understand what later life is all about and to derive spiritual strength for its trials. Presumably many learn to balance their experience of physical decline with interior growth. They may even lay hold of the mystical dimensions of their faith and move to a new level of spirituality.

That level finds expression in a prayer I quoted in the course of one talk. The Jesuit anthropologist, Teilhard de Chardin, whose cult flourished in the 1960s, wrote: “O God, grant that I may understand that it is you (provided only that my faith is strong enough) who are painfully parting the fibers of my being in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and bear me away within yourself.”

Not everyone would be comfortable with this mystical language but it expresses the faith of a profound priest-scientist who loved both God and the world of nature.

Another aspect of church life that caught my attention once more was its intergenerational quality. My gerontologist friend Harry Moody likes to point out the power of the church to unify people of various ages. He thinks that it is probably the social institution that does this best and I am inclined to agree with him.

Although the average age in that church was high, still I was glad to see families with young children as well. In fact, at one of the liturgies we celebrated the baptism of a seven year old boy with a name redolent of French history. Clovis was baptized to the acclaim of all the other parishioners, some of them presumably in their ninth and tenth decades of life.

Not all the images from my brief gerontological survey can be called upbeat. One late afternoon I was invited to an early bird dinner at a nearby restaurant. Next to our table was a seventy-something couple, the man facing me. All during their meal I watched to see if he would say anything to his companion. But, so far as I could discern, he spoke not a word to her throughout.

He downed his red wine, fed at his pasta, all without speaking a word and never changing expression. This couple, perhaps married for decades, offered a striking image of later life lived in quiet desperation.

A biblical reading from the next day’s liturgy struck me for its dynamic contrast with that restaurant scene. In the first book of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible, one reads of Elkanah, the husband of two wives.

One of these wives, Hannah, weeps because she has never conceived a child. To console her, Elkanah then says, “Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” Not all husbands, it would seem, have attained Elkanah’s level of spousal love.

At a party in another setting down there, I talked with a 70ish woman who spoke of past and future surgeries for herself and her friends. Referring to those who needed and need replacements, she said “We all have hips.” She did so with a spirit blithe enough to retain cheerfulness in the face of burdensome physical problems that accompany aging.

A three-mile walk early one morning with a Florida friend helped implement my ideal of both physical and spiritual exercise every day. Moving along at a brisk pace with an old friend made the experience even better for me as we reviewed personalities and shared events.

However, as often noted previously, I was struck by how few of my age peers were out walking that morning or, for that matter, people of any age. Unhappily enough, pessimistic studies of American exercise habits would seem to be based in reality.

Richard Griffin

HOB: Celebrating His Life

“Will you please keep it down? I’m trying to die here.” This is what my friend Hob told a group of Emergency Medical Technicians and others who were huddled around him as he lay on the floor of a restaurant. The EMTs must have felt astonished to hear a man joke as he prepared for death.

Hob thus came close to fulfilling a hope that he had voiced years earlier. When a friend asked him how he wanted his life to end, he had answered thus: “I want to die laughing.”

Death was no stranger to Hob. After all, he had done a kind of dress rehearsal for death by living for years with Alzheimer’s disease. His son, using a different metaphor, called it “Dad’s final exam.” With a typical combination of wit and seriousness, Hob himself named this affliction “horseblinders.”

His lightheartedness, mixed with a growing inability to say exactly what he wanted, often issued in striking phrases. The one I remember hearing with most poignancy came when he could not recall what he wanted to tell me. He motioned toward his wife and said: “She is my memory.”

Till close to the end, he retained enough control to create puns and use other figures of speech about his plight, a practice that helped make him what one family member calls “a beautiful model for living with illness.” A few days before that Thanksgiving, he announced: “It’s time to jump ship.”

These facts and many others about Hob emerged from a memorial service held three weeks after his death at age 78 on Thanksgiving Day. Like other friends who took part, I came away from this celebration of his life with a much better knowledge of a man I had thought already well known to me.

For the last several years we had been members of a meditation group, together with Hob’s wife Olivia and two other friends. Every few weeks, the five of us would gather in the mid-afternoon in his living room. After shared greetings, we would choose someone to softly ring a small bell and, sitting in a circle around a lighted candle and flowers, we would close our eyes for a half hour’s silence.

For someone like me who finds meditation difficult, it was helpful to feel the support of others as I turned inward. Afterward, we would exchange reflections on recent events in our lives and whatever insights we might have gained from the meditation. At such times, I especially valued Hob’s wide spiritual experience.

Hob was a true spiritual adventurer. In search of enlightenment, he and his wife Olivia traveled widely and absorbed the riches of various spiritual traditions. Hob became close friends with Father Bede Griffiths, an English Benedictine priest, who established an ashram and lived like a Hindu holy man in India.

Thich Nhat Hanh was another major source of inspiration for Hob. This Tibetan Buddhist monk, in fact, ordained Hob as an elder spiritual teacher, a role that held great meaning for him. Hob’s wide experience was a source of wonder for me because of my limited knowledge of traditions different from my own.

Friends who spoke at the memorial service brought out other facets of Hob’s life from times before spirituality became so important to him. It struck me that he was known by different first names at different points in his life. Those who knew him growing up tended toward “Harry;” others used his formal first name “Harrison;” and those who became familiar with him in his maturity tended to call him “Hob,” as I did.

Who but his oldest friends would ever have known about Hob being captain of the rifle team, a boy who broke the record in his prep school by scoring 496 points out of 500?

From his two now adult children at the service we learned about Hob as a father. His son referred to visitors who used to come to their home: “The presence of so many wisdom figures at an early formative age was his best gift to me.” His daughter recalled their many family trips: “We sang rounds in the car.” Until this time I did not know that singing was one of Hob’s favorite activities but I should have guessed this of such a buoyant personality.

If this brief remembrance of a multi-faceted friend leaves the impression that things were easy for him, that would be a false impression. Like the rest of us, Hob often found things difficult, especially in his last years. Though he could joke about death, he admitted how scared he sometimes was.

Yet I will remember the characterization given by one of his friends who spoke of his smile, his sense of mischief, his humor, and his “joy of life.” And I will especially cherish his unending search for light.

Richard Griffin

Atchley on the Three Stages

Bob Atchley is a scholar in the field of aging, a man with a wide reputation for writing and teaching. A textbook he first wrote long ago has gone through nine editions and has extended his influence across the country.

But Professor Atchley is not much interested in professional success. Rather, he directs his chief focus toward the spiritual life and makes that the center of his work. That is why he decided some ten years ago to leave the university where he was teaching and join the faculty at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Naropa educates people to incorporate Buddhist spirituality into their learning and their professional work. In doing this, it hopes to transform the work that caregivers and others do into an activity that promotes growth in the spirit. Bob Atchley sees this as a distinctive approach to education whereby students will learn how to help both themselves and those they serve to profit spiritually from their work.

Meanwhile, Professor Atchley continues his own research into the spiritual life of real people. In recent times, he has been investigating spirituality in older people. His findings, still tentative, would seem to have meaning, not only for older people, but for people of all ages.

In a recent interview, he disclosed a threefold scheme that identifies spiritually the older people he has talked with.

He calls the first group “Elders in Training.” These he describes as people who have begun to place importance on their “inner work.” They are trying to nurture the spirit within their souls. They are also looking for role models and for ways to get involved in the community.

The second group is made up of “Actualized Spiritual Elders.” They have deepened their connection to God, the Absolute, Nirvana, what some have called “the Divine Ground of Being.”

Speaking of the spiritual connection that people in this second group have, Atchley says: “It’s not going away; they live from that connection day in and day out. They are on boards, involved in service capacities, tutoring kids, but in a different way.” This difference lies in the way these people connect their community service with their interior life.

The third group he calls “Transcendent Elders.” They live beyond this world. Few people, he believes, ever get to this stage but nevertheless it remains valuable as an ideal. And some of the ordinary people around us, whom we perhaps see every day, might surprise us if we knew the details of their interior life.

Atchley cites a blind man in his 90s: “He was radiantly at peace, wonderful to be around.” This man found strength in the biblical passages and the poetry that he had memorized when young. Drawing on these sources, the same man overcame a mild depression and came to know peace of heart.

In talking with others like this man, Atchley has found the shared factor drawing them is a hunger for a connection with spirit. “By 75 or 80, people don’t buy what the culture tells them is attractive or valuable,” he says. Instead, they want something deeper and more meaningful.

Drawing on his knowledge of other spiritual traditions, Atchley calls the Hindu tradition relevant to this scheme, “The Hindus did a good job of mapping the stages,” he explains. They speak of a threefold Yoga or spiritual discipline: the Yoga of Understanding, the Yoga of Service, and the Yoga of Devotion.

Bob Atchley cites a person he considers a striking model of the third stage of spiritual development. “He’s a brilliant guy who spends time driving a school bus and taking care of poor people. His inner life is astounding.”

Many people prefer simply to live by the spirit without concern for where they may be on some scale of perfection. But such schemes at least remind us that the spiritual life is dynamic, it does not stand still. To be engaged in it is to be on an adventure, an interior journey that leads us toward mystery.

And a scheme like Bob Atchley’s helps us appreciate mottos like one of my favorites. “Finding God in all things” was the guiding ideal of St. Ignatius of Loyola and has retained its power over almost five centuries. This ideal cannot be arrived at quickly. It takes a long time to make this a spiritual motto that can empower daily life.

Richard Griffin