The Path To Spiritual Recovery
by CONNIE KURTENBACH, Ladysmith, BCI 'd like to think I was devoted to the Institutional Church, not addicted to it. Most of us can't easily imagine being addicted to a religion, a church, a god. After all, it's too holy and apostolic. It houses all truth. It is the straight and narrow pathway to heavenly life. Every metaphor seems to sound good. Remember the rituals on television around the pope's death? What could be better than that? Over the years, look at all the books we read, the prayers we said, the discussions we had. In fact, we spend most of every day immersed in the Church. I will always love the liturgies, the music, and the community of that time. But that time is past. It has little power over me. The encyclical of JPII on women killed the last vestige of connection I felt to the Roman church. It was all talk. There is no place for women to be empowered in that Roman Church.
Let me be clear. I have witnessed many kinds of addiction and managed the smoking addiction for many years. That I settled at 60 years old. As a psychotherapist I know that an addiction is a pathological relationship to a cause, a person or drug. Alcohol was the addiction of choice in my day. I might have developed that addiction, but alcohol mostly made me sick, so I never got onto it as an addiction. I did witness addictions. It's really important to know there is a drink in the house at all times. Drinking has all kinds of rituals: happy hour, sneaky secret drinking and weekend binges, to name a few. For years it was a lifestyle condoned in most social gatherings. We saw it in the movies and television as part of our entertainment. Drinking was a way to relax. It tastes so good. By the fifth drink it's heavenly. We read brand names; everyone has their favorite; we discuss it endlessly. Do you remember the famous 'shaken not stirred' martini? Do you remember the falling down drunk on the corner, at a party, in your house? Ah! That was just a party that went over the top. Or he's got the "flu," not a hangover. Action. Camera. Pretend. And so delusion and denial begins.
The first thing about religion, like alcohol addiction, is that it can feel good. And God knows we want to feel good. Especially if we think we feel bad. We usually enter into this style of religion in our families. Now there is the beginning of a potential addiction. We need to feel different. We need to mood alter. We begin to develop this mood altering behaviour at several levels: in our thinking, our feeling and our actions. We bargain with God. We make storm novenas. We practice rituals of payback to God. Remember that phase? That's developing mood altering behaviour, a magical thinking relationship with a cause and a person: our Roman Church and our Image of God. If our self-esteem and sense of integrity are weak, we are more vulnerable to this pattern. We do not even know we are in a trade-off. Our relational immaturity keeps us powerless. AA talks a lot about delusion and denial. We give away our power. We just don't see the delusion. But we still need it.
This pattern often exists in Roman Catholic families. Cradle Catholics have all the language of affirming, loving and functional messages on the one hand and scolding, guilting and punishing on the other. Catholics, among other religions, can fling around the language and behaviour we all know too well that is hypocritical: cursing, deception, mean spiritedness and coldness at home, while pious, pleasant, even generous and prayerful at church. These mixed messages can be toxic to children enjoying natural spirituality. Remember the days of setting up the ironing board as the altar with special cloths laid down smoothly, some unlit candles and Mama's stand up crucifix? I can still see myself officiating as priest to my little friends, distributing peppermint candies for communion: "Pax vobiscum" and "Et cum Spiritu tuo."
Later, I got sent to play the organ and sing in the choir. The boy down the street became a priest. I didn't know I couldn't be a priest! But I did become a nun and for the most part loved it. Vatican II was a huge awakening call. We became aware of the unspoken messages of family and Church that can lead to our own brokenness and behaviour compensation for a problem we do not understand and cannot recognize for some time. How does one break out of this cultural trance?
A loving experience can awaken our lost spiritual self. It can be as dramatic as a near death experience, something scary, something sobering or timely like Vatican II and all that followed. We begin to wake up from our altered state. Perhaps it's the parish priest encouraging us, a great teacher reading our soul, a healing therapist leading us into the light, an AA family ready and waiting to support us. Perhaps it is all of them. We do awaken, perhaps jolted by the experience of our pain, and begin to heal and find our power. A client once told me in trepidation that Jesus had visited her in the detox centre. He reached out to her in this vision. She did not dare believe she deserved it. Could it be real or a hallucination? Oh yes, it was real! It was her conversion from alcohol, sexual addiction, drugs and bulimia. It is the awakening that lifts us from our drug induced state and our addictive behaviours. It is the beginning of a process that will become concrete and create changes in thought, feelings and actions. A habit, which is a series of repeated behaviours, will be changed. Step by step, with others of like mind and health, we are led to a new vision. Remember the first Corpus Canada Conference in Saskatoon? It was so uplifting and exciting to hear Terry Dosh awaken our sensitivity to the married priest, his partner and family.
Central to an awakening experience is the development of functional and loving relationships at all levels: with self, family, friends and larger systems such as the institutional church and, of course, with a Power greater than ourselves. As this continues to grow, the institutional church loses its power over us. It can have power over many still, but for me it is a show of power. It is theatre. Camera, action, pretense! My real life is with those I love and share community: my family, friends, and seekers of deep spirituality. We are the believers, and the visionaries. We are not the patriarchal, all male, monolithic Roman Church. We are Church. We are people of God, followers of the Way.
We can have our vision and be released from our inner wounds. We can also detach from family system messages and finally from the fear of eternal condemnation engendered by a dysfunctional Church organization. We can be released from the fear of a patriarchal god or pope. We can be free from creeping infallibilism, immature sexuality, brokered sacramentality and the intellectual seduction of magisterial messages based on poor theology. We can change our thoughts, our feelings and our actions. We can aspire to Kohlberg's higher stages of consciousness and moral behaviour. We can become, as Liliana Kopp suggests, a 'Church Radiant.' Day by day, we are liberated. We can bring the sacraments to each other, we can develop loving relationships, we can honour our charisms, because we have found our true self and therefore are connected to our true self-love and integrity. And once there is a loving "I," as Buber says, there can be a "thou." This is how we complete the divine enterprise.
I want to say something about our women in these times. We are vigilant. We are seekers far beyond the Roman Church. We have reached back to the Source and found our Way. As women of the world, we have learned that a conversion experienced must be guarded vigilantly and nurtured continually. An awakening gifted and a path chosen to wholeness, healing and holiness is not secured. We need to hold fast to this calling and be open forever to transformation.
We must pray, meditate, and speak out at all times. If this institutional Church does not have a place for us in its paradigm, we must make our place with the people of the world. We can celebrate with great joy the vastness of love we have accessed in our new freedom. Our subjugation to a male Church is over. The last shred of addiction has dissolved. With Martin Luther King's visionary words, we each can say: "I have a dream." We can build new and healthy family churches (communities) that are God-centered, not Clergy-centered, churches that are collegial and consensual. As Christina Baldwin says, we sit at the rim of the circle with Spirit in the centre. We, the people of God, honour ourselves and our neighbours, whether Jew or Samaritan, man or woman, free or slave. We are all pilgrims on a journey to Unconditional Love. We are truly God's people. This journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, says Lao Tzu. Our Higher Power is with us.
We will sing and dance in the new times: "Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est."