The secular mind

Dorothy Day, reportedly, once observed, "Some people say to me, `The secular mind is your enemy.' I say no, no. I say the secular mind is God's huge gift to us for the sake of one another."

Perhaps, the sacral mind comes, if not from a lesser deity, at the very least as a temptation to close in upon our own selves, our own tribes, our own interests.

Some weeks back deep in the further reaches of Midwest, people from across the U.S. participated in the final round of a debate over the question, "Religion or science: which of these has inflicted more harm on people?"

To the debaters' arguments no final answer is possible. If science embodies for modernity the secular mind, and the secular mind is indeed "God's huge gift," for some religion may indeed ground concern for the other, not merely the other so like ourselves, but the other in whom we find it impossible to see ourselves.

On the other hand, religion turned in upon itself and its formulaic sacralism is prone not only to rejection of the other, but often to the destruction of otherness. At odds with the Creator, religion in its sacral form drives some to judge all too many realities "not good."

To those so impelled sacralism metes out its own punishment: an arid and carping spirit unable to connect to God or humanity, trapped in a one-dimensional universe lacking color. This self-inflicted damage would be sad enough. Sadder by far is--to use a contemporary military euphemism, the collateral damage--the unmerited punishment inflicted on bystanders. Unmeasured and unmeasurable, precisely because the damage is thoughtless, missiles and missives are hurled at populations, if not innocent of selfishness, at least willing to reach beyond themselves.

When missile-like missives rain down not merely on others suffering because of their otherness, but on those dedicated to alleviating their suffering, the tragedy is compounded. God of the "huge gift" indeed must weep.

The "huge gift" God must have hidden his face this summer when the heirs of the Inquisition attacked the ministering spirit Sister Jeannine Grammick and Father Robert Nugent have brought to gay and lesbian Catholics for many years. To the world at large and the church in particular, their ministry was to the other, the one in whom few find it possible to see themselves.

As is the case in most warfare, it is not difficult to justify the initial Vatican intervention in this case. For the good of all, true believers and true seekers alike, church authorities set out to test and validate the published and public record of this ministry. This ministry is conspicuous for its single-minded commitment to presence within the gay community rather than advocacy of theological development. Its pastoral concern was to bridge the gap between gay individuals and the believing community. Nugent and Grammick tailored their statements in an effort to reach out to gay people without contradicting prevailing church teaching.

Apparently finding no incriminating statement, the Vatican moved from testing teaching to testing the teachers, conducting a personal inquisition into the private beliefs of the ministers. The unnegotiable demand was that the ministers sign a personal profession of faith. The demanded profession enumerated theological and moral statements as specific as they were novel to church documents prior to the last couple of decades in the church's almost two millennia history. Clearly, to affirm or deny the adequacy of the language in the profession of faith was outside the competence of ministers, who made no claim to theological expertise. Thus, their signatures on the documents would be devoid of credibility on the substance of the questions. The unavoidable conclusion is that their signing was demanded to establish a claim of control, of domination. Setting out in a battlefield to alleviate suffering, the nursing ministers became war trophies. No wonder that THE TABLET (July 24, 1999) headlined the affair, Crushing the Pastors.

Biblical scholars and theologians suffer collateral damage. First, it was the secular mind that enabled us to see human sexuality in fullness sufficient to make homosexuality no longer "unspeakable." In the relationship of church to enlightenment, the pattern is all too familiar whether it be a question of democratic governance, the rights of conscience, the acceptability of slavery or the role of women. True, here and there, the secular mind lags and the sacral mind marches onward. The progress is uneven. American bishops and humanists alike saw the evil of capital punishment at a time when the current Vatican administration was still justifying it. Today bishops, humanists and the Vatican alike are however ahead of a U.S. population still addicted to blood vengeance.

Second and similarly, the secular mind developed the analytical tools critical to biblical scholarship today. Historical and literary criticism, and their elaboration in social science studies, have proved their worth. Beginning with Pope Pius XII's 1943 Divino afflante Spiritu, and continuing through Vatican II's constitution on revelation and the recent work of the Biblical Commission, an approach to the Bible rooted in the best the secular mind inspires has been authorized as the official Catholic mode of interpretation.