Thoughts on the Papacy -
Container Versus Contents
Richard Rohr, OFM
April 22, 2005
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The
world’s response to the Papal events of the last month, either
favorable or even antagonistic, made something very clear to me.
There will always be a need for religion, and there is a large
percentage of people who like religion. Religion gets most of us
started on the spiritual path, and keeps prodding us with relevant
questions along the way. It creates the container, keeps the
edges hot, offers the invitation and the inviting formulas, creates
satisfying rituals, and boundary-setting commandments. It lures
many people onto an initial spiritual path. It is very good and
even necessary—as far as it goes.
But after 35 years as a priest, I
am convinced that most people stop right there. They confuse the
maintenance of this container with the contents themselves. They
confuse the rituals with the reality that they point to. Paul is
impassioned about this: “it really makes no difference whether one is
circumcised or not, all that matters is that one is created anew”
(Galatians 6:15). Remember, circumcision was as central to Jews as
baptism is for Christians.
I no longer believe that religion
is always the same as a sincere and personal search for God.
Sometimes it is, often it isn’t. All the concern for the death
and funeral of the last Pope, the personality of the Pope, the
preoccupation with the conclave and election of the new one, is great
historical theater. But you must admit, that you can be totally
“into” such things and not be in the least transformed into what Paul
calls “a new creation”. A high percentage of people—I meet
them at the post office and hear them on TV, just love the whole
spectacle. But there is not ordinarily much matching interest in
the actual teaching of Jesus, real prayer, social justice, or any
in-depth transformative journeys. Many people just like religion,
it
seems to me.
I heard a very telling quote recently from the
Dalai Lama. When asked by a young person how he could begin a
spiritual life, he answered him in a most honest and foreboding
way. He apparently said, “If you can possibly avoid a spiritual
path, by all means do so! It will take your whole life
away.” He got it! I believe that most religion,
however, is an attempt to feel spiritual and superior in a very
measured and culturally correct way, largely by emphasizing one or two
mandates or one or two rituals. This cleverly allows us to avoid
discovering and surrendering our “whole life”. No wonder religion
is so popular. No wonder piety sells. It is a great
bargain. Join, attend, perform, obey here and there—and you can
basically live your life unchanged. “Whoever would save his life,
must lose it”, as Jesus put it. But none of us want to lose it.
I am not saying that most people are
phony or hypocrites, although I suppose some are. I am just
saying that this is what has been largely offered in the West as a
vicarious spiritual path. It is what we are led to expect as the
goal—join, attend, perform, obey here and there—and that is what it
means to know and love God. This has become the cultural pattern
for most of our religions, Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and
Islamic.
If you want and need religion, I think the
Papacy is rather excellent at providing just that. No one does it
better, and it will continue to appeal to a large percentage of
humanity, many young people, and then again at the end of life.
Individuals need the container to get started; nations and cultures
need religion to hold together. Institutional Christianity, and
the Papacy in particular, will give you intellectual arguments,
enchanting rituals, grand historical sweep, a fine belonging system,
and a clear morality to give you pleasing ego boundaries. This
will hold you together quite well. It works at deep and good
levels. It can create the real beginnings of spiritual desire, as
it did for me. But just remember, it can also give you just
enough of God to quite effectively inoculate you from any need or
search for the real thing. This is the normal pattern, in my
experience. “I have no need for inner experience. I have outer
assurances”. In fact, I find a rather clear correlation between
one’s preoccupation with outer forms and one’s lack of any inner
substance.
The question for me is how much of your life do you
want to give to maintaining, supporting, and cheering the container,
and when do you get on to finding your real life and "giving it
away"? Any preoccupation with exalting or maintaining Peter does
not seem to be the least part of Jesus’ teaching, but once you replace
the contents with the container, Peter becomes your concern, your
figurehead, your projection screen, even your vicarious
salvation. Peter is fine, but he was never meant to be a
substitute for Jesus or the Gospel.
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