Adversaries

Media people know that conflict sells. “When it bleeds, it leads.” When you can show video of people protesting, or quote someone disagreeing with an accepted idea, viewers and readers perk up.

My old theological textbook followed a medieval format that is supposed to go back to Peter Abelard: “sic et non.” Pro and con. Make a statement and then present arguments for the statement and arguments against the statement. The opponents to the statement were the “adversaries,” usually Protestants.

Our textbooks were not exciting—the adversaries were often straw men. The textbook authors didn’t want to make the other side look too appealing, or students might get wrong ideas. Our seminary was physically isolated, in the cornfields of southern Illinois. There were Protestants in southern Illinois, but we never set foot off the property so we were in no danger of meeting any.

We live in a vastly different environment today. We live with adversaries from morning to night, beginning with members of our own families. How many devout Catholic parents lament children who don’t go to church any more? And then there are the media. We swim in world views that ignore religious traditions, a business world that seems never to have heard of the Sermon on the Mount. The Republican Party thinks that the center of the country, where religion still survives, can overcome the coastal cultures that regard religion as your grandparents’ fantasies. But what if the coastal cultures are the future?

They are the future.

We need to use our adversaries, not lament them.

We should never state a religious belief without engaging with the people who don’t accept that belief. I think that reading the Gospels makes my life richer. What makes your life richer? What does a rich life look like?

Straw men won’t work. We need to be talking directly with living adversaries, people who have really different ways of looking at things from the ways we look at them. Our goal isn’t to convert the adversaries. Our goal is to understand our own beliefs better.

This reminds me of the “rules for ecumenical dialog” that I first heard from the Jesuit Gustav Weigel back in the early 1960s:

1. I state my belief as clearly and honestly as I can.

2. You state your belief as clearly and honestly as you can.

3. Let the Holy Spirit determine the outcome.

Now we can’t just walk up to people on the street and start talking religion. We need a pretext to talk religion. We need a structure to make conversation acceptable.

One such structure is the PSR class, the “parish school of religion” that most parishes use. Here is what we say as Catholics, and here is why we say it. Who disagrees with it? Can we listen to people who disagree? Can we imagine what they are thinking? Can we get one of them to come to the class and talk with us about what they think?

There have got to be other pretexts for talking religion. Let us get creative.

Catholicism has a rich history of engaging with secular cultures. After a clumsy start (Galileo) we have engaged with the sciences. We don’t need to protect each other from dangerous ideas. We need to face dangerous ideas head on, trusting that the Spirit will help us in the exchange.

I have a sense that much of our religious instruction is boring. It’s boring because it doesn’t make us use our intellectual muscles. It is grounded in fear. It doesn’t capitalize on our adversaries.

Adversaries are not enemies. They are people like us, trying to live rewarding lives just like us, swamped by cultural demands and forces just like us. Sure, there are some people with bad intentions among them, but there are people with bad intentions among us. Even the evil adversary can become an ally—look at Saul of Tarsus.

We should welcome adversaries, and use them to deepen our understanding of what we believe and live by.