"True Religion, II"

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As a young priest in a working-class parish on the north side of Kansas City, I was sent by the pastor to give the last rites to an elderly man, an Italian immigrant who was said to be dying.

The man’s wife opened the door and greeted me courteously, but the man himself was standoffish. He seemed to want no part of me and I suspected that the visit was his wife’s idea. After the brief rite, now called the Sacrament of the Sick, the wife took me aside to explain that the man was terrified to have a priest come. To him, it signaled the end, a visit by the “angel of death.”

Upon leaving, I asked about the neighbors and whether the couple could depend on them if they needed help. “We have nothing to do with the neighbors,” the wife said, and that’s when I noticed a huge picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus – a popular devotion in Catholicism – hanging in the most prominent place in the living room.

Ignoring neighbors

The idea of the devotion is that Jesus’ physical heart represents God’s love and our need to love each other. But here were people honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus who, at best, ignored their neighbors. For me, the experience became an example how the doctrine and trappings of religion can so easily be separated from one’s life.

I’ve written about how hard I believe it is to be spiritual without being religious. But can you be religious without being spiritual? A lot of people try, but I believe it’s a contradiction.

Obviously, being “religious” means different things to different people, depending on the person and that person’s background and beliefs. And it means something different today from what it did decades ago when there was little distinction between being “spiritual” and being “religious.”

According to the dictionary, religion is “a personal set or institutional system of religious attitudes, beliefs and practices,” while one definition of spirituality is “of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit.”

For me, spirituality is ultimately connected to a search for God, and the search is spiritual because the unknown God is described as “spirit,” obviously an entity that can’t be seen or detected by human senses or science. And trying to be “religious” by adopting the trappings and practices of organized religion without taking the search for God seriously is an exercise in futility.

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Nothing is more illustrative of this than the scenes in one of the Godfather films in which the Godfather is attending the solemn baptism of a child, performed by a bishop in an ornate Catholic Church, while his lieutenants savagely murder his rivals.

This idea of “religion” supports today's stereotypes, which in the popular culture are represented by the “church lady,” the avaricious TV evangelist, the person who judges others, the intolerant bigot and people associated with right-wing causes.

Perhaps we have too narrow a view of what it means to be religious and too broad a view of what it means to be spiritual. Many want to restrict religious leaders like Pope Francis to “religion” when what they have to say appears to infringe on the political or ideological. On the other hand, many see reading horoscopes, meditating or chasing esoteric trends as “spiritual.”  

People at the time of Jesus appear to have had a similar problem. The Scribes and Pharisees against whom Jesus railed were experts at following the law, seeing that others did so and displaying the trappings of Judaism. But they had trouble following its spirit.

Jesus’ disciples misunderstood his message, too. The author of Acts of the Apostles, which is said to have been written about 50 years after Jesus’ death, in The Message translation describes one of the last meetings between Jesus and his disciples in which they ask: “Master, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?” In other words, are you going to kick out the Romans and restore Jewish rule?

Still Confused

After years with him, his disciples were still confused about Jesus’ mission, as we often are. But despite how some modern authors choose to describe him, Jesus was not about politics or ideology. From reading the gospels, it’s obvious that his main concern was human beings’ relationship to God and each other.  

So getting back to what it means to be “religious,” it means – at least in the Christian sense - being a disciple, following Jesus, the teaching of the gospels, and recognizing others as brothers and sisters. And it you’re a church member, it means following your church’s teachings according to your conscience.

Christians, it seems to me, must contribute to the body politic by expressing their views, but they are not called to be sucked into ideology, partisan politics and the culture wars. They are not called to arm themselves for battle but adopt Jesus’ way of love. That means searching for God with patience and a willingness to accept uncertainty. It also means respecting other people’s searches and showing the way by the way we live.

As far as I know, there’s only one “definition” of religion in the Bible. It’s in the Letter of James, a “book” considered a regular part of the Bible by Catholics but an “apocryphal” book by most Protestants – meaning there is controversy about whether they should, or should not, be part of the Bible. Anyway, here’s the definition of James, believed to be the leader of the early Christian community in Jerusalem or someone writing in his name, according to The Message translation:

“Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reaching out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guarding against corruption from the godless world.”