In praise of doubt

I never knew that the German weekly Die Zeit had a section called “Faith and Doubt” until I recently read about it in The Tablet. The influential English Catholic periodical was reporting an interview with the president of the German bishops' conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, which was published in this section of Die Zeit.

To receive or not to receive

During the interview, Archbishop Zollitsch, has come out in favour of discussing the issue of Communion for remarried divorcees.

While both Cardinal Meisner of Cologne and the apostolic nuncio in Germany, Archbishop Jean-Claude Périsset, immediately distanced themselves from Archbishop Zollitsch, several prominent German theologians applauded him. Cardinal Meisner said that Archbishop Zollitsch had only been speaking as the Archbishop of Freiburg and not as the president of the bishops' conference, but it is clear from the interview that this is not so. Archbishop Zollitsch uses the pronoun "we" throughout giving an indication that he was speaking on behalf of the German bishops and indeed of the Church.

Archbishop Zollitsch admitted that this was "naturally" a problem and said, "We are all faced with the problem of how we can help people in whose lives certain things have gone wrong and that include a wrecked marriage. This is a question of mercy and we will be discussing this problem intensively in the near future."

Asked if he thought President Wulff (the German President is divorced and remarried) was a good Catholic, Archbishop Zollitsch replied, "For me he is a Catholic who lives his faith and suffers greatly on account of the situation he is in. This is a very serious problem but I really think that we will move forward on the issue of remarried divorcees within my lifetime."

To doubt or not to doubt

Several point to the solution adopted by the Orthodox church as a possible framework for finding a solution. However, the point I wish to make in this blog is not whether someone in a second relationship can receive communion or not. My reflection, inspired by Die Zeit is about the role of doubt in one’s search for religious meaning.

There are people who are certain that they have no doubt about their religious beliefs and the way it is practiced. Should I admire them? I am not sure that such an attitude is always laudable. Throughout the centuries doubt has been proven to be the mover of better understanding and intelligent development of religious beliefs and practices. In the Catholic Church we give importance to this type of development so much so that we speak of the development of dogma.

At the other end of the spectrum of belief there are  people who doubt everyone and everything. The perpetual and universal doubter can turn one into a sort of wet blanket. Perpetual doubters get nowhere as eventually they start doubting even themselves.

Doubt, in my opinion, can play a very healthy role in our process of growing up as humans and as people of faith (or lack of it). The honest doubter is a searcher; and searchers easily become founders.

Weil: doubter and seeker

I recently had my belief in doubt strengthened by a little book I had bought a long time ago but only managed to read lately between one plane trip and another. I refer to Simone Weil’s “Letter to a Priest.)

 Simone Weil (born in  1909 in Paris, France), was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist. She died at the age of thirty four. The book is a letter Weil addressed to a French priest living in  New York where she was living in the autumn of 1934 waiting to join the French Free Movement.

There is no record that the letter was answered.

In this letter Weil struggles with her doubts in an attempt to reach the truth. She felt at home with the New Testament and Christian mystics but was troubled by the teaching of the Council of Trent. Should she become a Christian outside the Church, she asked herself. But if that is a possibility it would mean that the Church is not Catholic, i.e. universal, and this should not be.

Some segments of the book evoke Rahner’s theology of Anonymous Christians years before he wrote about it.

“All those who possess in its pure state the love of their neighbor and the acceptance of the order of the world, including affliction – all those, even should they live and die to all apprearances atheists, are surely saved. Those who possess perfectly these two virtues, even should they live and die atheists, are saints.” (p.20).

This sentence is more beautiful indeed.

“A gift of alms out of pure charity is as great a marvel as walking upon the waters.” (p. 33)

Her great emphasis on love of others is well placed.

“Christ does not save all those who say to him ‘Lord, Lord’. But he saves all those who out of a pure heart give a piece of bread to a starving man, without thinking about Him the least little bit. And these, when He thanks them, reply: ‘Lord, when did we feed thee?’” (p. 21)

She warns against the danger that ensure when Church people fall in the temptation of considering the institutional elements of the Church as supreme.

“Everything has proceeded as though in the course of time no longer Jesus, but the Church, had come to be regarded as being God incarnate on this earth. The metaphor of the ‘mystical Body’ serves as a bridge between the two conceptions. But there is a slight difference, which is that Christ was perfect, whereas the Church is sullied by a host of crimes” (22-23).

Try to get a copy and read the rest. It is no easy reading. Some of her questions are easy to answer; others are not. However, sharing her journey of doubting should be enriching.