From: stabosz@chopin.udel.edu (Rae Stabosz)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: Nature of List--Fossil
Date: 12 Nov 92 20:55:32 GMT
Organization: University of Delaware

In article <9211111450.AA59827@chaos.intercon.com> Amanda Walker <amanda@INTERCON.COM> writes:
>stabosz@chopin.udel.edu (Rae Stabosz) writes:
>> I don't see the saints.  If this is a re-energized, lively Church with
>> people bursting out with the power of the Spirit, I want to see some
>> saints.  Really.  Saints like Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Sienna,
>> Francis of Assisi, Therese of Lisieux, Thomas Aquinas, Dominic, Louis de
>> Montfort... I want to see real, living, holy men and women whose lives
>> self and follow Jesus.
>
>One problem with this approach is that often, saints (including some you
>mention above) are not recongized as such in their own time.  Saints are
>generally recognized post facto, not during their own lifetimes.  And so, one
>would expect that any saints alive today are not recognized by the Church.
>
>That being said, I do think that there are a great many people in the Church
>today who do indeed live lives of transformation, crossing sectarian
>boundaries in their demonstration of living in Christ.  Whether any of them
>are saints remains to be seen, but they are certainly exemplars of the
>vitality of the Church.  As examples, consider Thomas Merton, Teilhard de
>Chardin, Mother Teresa, the Catholics and Orthodox who kept their faith alive
>behind the Iron Curtain and whose names are only now becoming known in the
>west, the people of Denmark who managed to evacuate the Danish Jewish
>population in 1943 just before the Germans blockaded the country, and so on.
>
*******

Yes, this is true.  I think what I was mostly thinking of, when I wrote
so emotionally above, was the verbalizations that I have heard so often,
and almost always from the more liberal side of the Catholic spectrum,
that aspiring to holiness is not a worthy aspiration.  That it is
"too bourgeoise", too inner-directed instead of outward-directed towards
others, too old-fashioned, if you will.  Thomas Merton and Teilhard de 
Chardin are certainly well placed on the "liberal" side of the spectrum,
theologically, but their writings do inspire.  I'm not sure if St.
Teresa published her writings or circulated them during her own
lifetime, but she was well-known and she did have a "following" -- her
closest sisters, I have heard, thought well enough of her that they
destroyed her correspondence with John of the Cross lest they fall into
the hands of his or her enemies, and be used against them as proof of
a "familiar friendship" that would taint both their reputations.  So
I'm not sure she was a hidden saint in the way that you mean, although
certainly I believe firmly that there are such quiet and hidden saints
living lives of devotion which are transformational to those around
them.  Indeed I have seen it.  I don't for a moment think that saints
are no different than us, either... just that right now I am sure that
there are no good grounds for starting a canonization process on Rae
Stabosz.  

My note was in reaction to Jim MacKintosh's (sp) disparaging of the
pre-Vatican Church, as if it was a bogeyman and its practices not   
worthy of appropriating to our own times.  That Church produced many
saints, and their words are available for all to read -- what they
had to say about the daily work involved in living out their faith.
I have read many beautiful and inspiring words from contemporary
theology, but contemporary spirituality seems very mushy to me.
Mother Teresa is the only Catholic I know of who writes directly and
meatily about spirituality, and hers is very much in line with that
of Teresa and Therese and Francis, etc.  

If you can point me to contemporary spiritual writers besides Mother
Teresa, please do.  I have read the works of the gentleman (a priest,
I believe, or a brother) who wrote Genessee Diary, whose name escapes
me at the moment.  He's what I call somewhat mushy.  Now of course I
don't get all my advice from books, I do my own day to day living,
plus I now (after many years of looking and praying for one) have a
very fine spiritual director.  But I guess I am trying to integrate
my "liberal" experience with my "conservative" experience, as a
Catholic.  I put both in quotes because I dislike labels, and I dislike
being labeled, but one inevitably is labeled and the label often fits.
Until recently, for example, if I had to identify myself as any kind of
Catholic I would identify myself as a "liberal Catholic."  However,
I have had a radical change in thought recently and now I am re-
appropriating my classical Catholic upbringing (labeled "conservative"
in today's Church), and making a serious attempt to integrate it with
my liberal experience.  So right now it is that I am noticing the
paucity of spiritual resources in the liberal camp.  Or is it?
Maybe not... I am searching for my _own_ way, and I know instinctively
and with my reason, that my call has to do with understanding and
integrating these two halves or opposites, within myself and my own
experience, precisely because I have found such truth and so much of
God in both.  I would be very very glad to be pointed towards a
contemporary liberal Catholic writing spiritually in a way that is
loyal to Apostolic teaching but still distinctively liberal.  Please
let me know if you can point me to such a source.  Thanks!



>"Light up the sky?"  If you had looked at St. Teresa during her life, you
>wouldn't have seen a "lit up sky."  You would have seen a struggling nun (and
>later, abbess) plagued with doubts and often condemned by her contemporaries.
>Saints genuinely are people like you and me--their sainthood springs from
>their lives and deaths, not from any difference in nature.
>
>Peace,
>
>Amanda Walker

****

Absolutely, when you say "saints genuinely are people like you and me --
their sainthood springs from their lives and deaths, not from any
difference in nature."  I believe that absolutely.  It isn't a mistaken
belief that saints are of a different nature than us that I say I'm not
a saint, and it's not out of humility, it's out of a very real knowledge
of my own ... not sinfulness, because saints are sinful people.... but
my own wishy-washiness, my own propensity for falling easily into
selfishness and staying there way past time for getting back into the
game.  I'm not willing to put all the blame on myself, though, because
I haven't been shown the right tools for the job... and the tools exist,
the lives of the saints, and their writings about such
tools, are proof of that.  

About 10 years ago at Mass the priest gave a
homily that I had heard about a zillion times in my life as a Catholic,
and that time I just wanted to stand up and scream out my protest.  He
talked about how we all needed just to try a little harder, how we are
all a little bit lazy and if we just took our faith seriously we could
do great things for God and our fellows.  I felt like screaming, "HOW???
TELL ME HOW!!!!  I'm NOT lazy... I'm totally dedicated... yet I am also
a mess and I fall in and out of selfishness and I CAN'T FIGURE OUT
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT!!!  Don't tell me I just need to try harder, tell
me what to DO to make it work!  How do I become like Jesus??  How do
I direct my life, my work, my loves, my hates, my loathings and my
callings and juggling my time with my family and my job and everything
I do..... tell me HOW to become a saint, don't tell me I should try
harder!"

That's where this is all coming from.  I know, Amanda, that my own
life and that of countless others is full of the presence of God...
I just want to hear that it's okay to strive for holiness in our
lives, and that in fact this is what we are all striving for... not
to push our own agendas, but to remove the planks from our own eyes
so that we can see clearly how to remove the specks from the eyes of
our hurting and violent and impoverished and victimized and victimizing
brothers and sisters all over this world we've been given custody
of.

Rae
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