On Nuns and Bad Teaching

I've had a number of discussions with people of my parents' or grandparents' generation who consider themselves faithful to the Church's teaching who have uttered rank heresies: we have to earn our salvation through good works; unbaptized babies will go to Hell; only Catholics can go to heaven. When I try to correct their mistaken notions, they reply defensively, "Well, that's what the nuns taught us when I was growing up."

My interlocutor here is invoking the spotless reputation of the "pre-Vatican II nun," in full habit, always faithful to the Church's teaching, praying for our souls whenever she isn't teaching our children, the bulwark of the local parish in the days before the Council allegedly turned everything upside-down and changed the Church's teaching, etc. Surely Sister wouldn't have taught us something that wasn't so? She wasn't like, you know, those nuns we have today.

First of all, there are many good and holy and faithful religious sisters today, just as there were then. And there are heretical and unfaithful nuns today, just as there were then.

We also have to consider the possibility that you have remembered incorrectly or you initially misunderstood what it was that the sisters taught you. Maybe you took their exhortations toward good works to mean that they are the mechanism by which we are saved, instead of that by which we are built up in holiness and closeness to God. Maybe you mistook the theological theory of the Limbo of unborn babies to be a hellish place. Maybe you thought when Sister talked about all the benefits of the Catholic faith (the grace of the sacraments, the fullness of the truth), you thought she meant that without these things it was impossible for anyone to be saved. Perhaps that was it?

And then there's this, a thought quite likely anathema to many: perhaps Sister taught you wrong. Maybe she was too stringent in her theology. Maybe she went beyond what the Church officially taught and believed. Maybe you weren't taught what you should have been. We could give the benefit of the doubt and assume a good intention, though. Perhaps Sister, living in a predominately Protestant country that openly discriminated against Catholics, got a little defensive and pushed a little beyond what the Church taught, in order to distinguish "us from them" and establish a firm identity with firm teaching: "No! Earn your way to heaven! Only baptized babies can get in! Only Catholics!" A bad result, but people can be excused at least a little for what they do when their backs are against the wall; or if not excused, at least we can sympathize.

Now, you might say to me, "Nick, you're a post-Vatican II child, you don't know all the changes that happened! That's what the Church used to teach! Things ain't the way they used to be."

Dude. I can read.

I've read theology manuals from before the Council, the ones used in seminaries and universities. They do not say that we earn salvation by works. They do not say that unbaptized babies go to Hell. They do not say that only Catholics can be saved. Indeed, they say pretty much exactly what the documents of the Second Vatican Council and subsequent teachings say. There are shifts in tone and emphasis and certain thoughts are developed more, but those are not substantial changes. The faith is essentially the same as it ever was, expanded and deepened but never contradictory.

If Sister taught you those things back then, she was wrong. Let's presume the error is in your memory and not in her instruction. Yes, the Church looks rather different on the outside in many ways compared to then. People hear things put in a different way than when they grew up, and they wonder what the change was about, and why it happened, and they long for the certainty they once had when Sister taught them such hard and fast doctrine. But let's make sure, in our search for certainty, that we're not certainly wrong.

On Comparing and Not Comparing Buddhism and Christianity

I'm taking a class on Buddhism this semester. Specifically, the class concerns the branch of Buddhism known as "Theravada," or "The Elders' View," designated thus because it claims to be that interpretation of the Buddha's teachings that was held and set out by those who were closest to him; after his passing, they gathered and chanted his teachings and agreed among themselves as to the wording of his teachings.

Now, one might read that sentence and say, "Oh, so it's sort of like what the apostles did after Jesus died and rose and ascended." Yes, there may be some similarities, but I've been trying not to make such comparisons while taking this course. Though it may sometimes aid understanding to relate some aspect of Buddhism to Christianity, I think more often it may be a hindrance. Conflating ideas in the two systems makes them lose their distinctiveness; if you translate the Buddhist term arahant (one who has become enlightened) as "saint," you drag all the connotations of that English word into the Buddhist word. Then you're no longer trying to understand Buddhism on its own terms, but instead are engaging it by mapping Christianity onto it. And then you'll go on to say how really similar all the world's religions are, how they're all true in their own way, etc. etc., when in fact you only say that because you're seeing Buddhism (and the rest of the world's religions) through Christian-colored glasses. While it's important to recognize truth wherever it exists, when we re-write other religions in Christian terminology, we're not helping that cause, only muddying the waters. We end up fulfilling the maxim of Msgr. Ronald Knox: "the study of comparative religions is the best way to become comparative religious."

That said, one tiny element of my reading struck me, and I thought a comparison would be beneficial precisely because it is true but likely to be rejected. In his book Theravada Buddhism: The View of the Elders, Asanga Tilakaratne describes the method for meditation. He says quite strongly that the one meditating "needs to find a suitable place for meditation and sit cross-legged with an erect body." Needs to? Needs to? How interesting. Many a Western person would read that and say, "The Buddhist understands the great importance of physical posture in maintaining a certain mindset. If you want to pay attention to something, have your body at attention: sit up, breathe deeply. If you slouch in your chair in class, you won't listen. You need to make your body ready for your mind to work. This makes perfect sense."

BUT if you were to tell many a Western person that there might be a preferred posture for praying or for engaging in that supreme act of communion with God, receiving the Eucharist, i.e. on one's knees, many of the very same Western persons who had just enunciated the universal proposition that there is a link between one's physical posture and one's mental state will suddenly make an about-face, and become indignant, and declare with deep feeling, "I may approach my God however I choose. It makes no difference whether I pray kneeling or sitting or standing on my head! It's all the same! God can hear me just as well! Quit trying to impose your preferences on me, you patriarchal, fascist conformist!"

Hmm. What a stark difference. What seemed an obvious and universal truth of human existence and operation in one context is suddenly objectionable in another context. But that truth can become obfuscated in our own familiar situation by cultural baggage and associations of thought. For some people, the thought of praying or receiving the Eucharist on one's knees conjures up images of a "pre-Vatican II mindset" of alleged rigidity and harshness and every other negative term one can associate with a religion, when it ought to convey reverence and humility and devotion. All that baggage obscures their view of the simple undeniable fact that there's a link between one's physical disposition and one's mental disposition. Anyone can see it; but sometimes your so blinded to your situation at home, you have to look at the neighbor's to see things as they are.