We Are All Students
I remember feeling uneasy during RCIA education because I expected to know all there is to know about being Catholic by the end of it, and that wasn’t happening. I’d read the Bible three times as a kid so I figured I was a pretty well-informed and mature catechumen. I thought I just needed to know the rules, when to bow and kneel and what words to say in Mass, and I’d be a good Catholic. Anxiety hit when I realized how little I even understood the words in Mass. Then there were sacraments, prayers, devotions – so much to learn I didn’t know how I’d ever complete it. Browsing the Catechism was downright overwhelming.
And when I asked questions, people pointed me to even more reading material. Encyclicals, decrees, apologetics, moral theology, writings of the saints, Church history, and then there was the ponderous Summa Theologica! Surprisingly though, every time I saw a little more light, I found I wanted more of it. Eventually, it settled on me that in my lifetime I can never finish, but more light is better than no more light. I don’t need to be anxious about not knowing it all, I am free to humbly appreciate the journey.
Interestingly, as varied as all the sources of information about Catholicism can be, their meaning is all united too. A devotion can illuminate your understanding of history; a hundred year old encyclical can increase your understanding of your pastor’s next homily; something you read in a chapter about moral theology will click in your mind as you recite a Hail Mary. It all fits together. We have so many resources, parish libraries, the Vatican’s website, thousands of Catholic blogs online, books about saints’ lives, guidance in the missals, and the gift of the inexhaustible Holy Scriptures.
Now when I hear a catechumen express concern about learning enough, I tell them not to worry. RCIA is like wading into an ocean of light. Don’t be overwhelmed by its enormity, be awed by its magnificence. Wade in a little deeper, swim around, explore, pray for guidance and learn to appreciate those excellent catechists who are willing to teach. They are still learning too. Really, we are all students together. As I’ve converted, I’ve realized I always will be converting in a sense, and that childhood curiosity and excitement that I lost to worldly anxieties has returned. God does make all things new, even the love of learning.
Image: That is a gift from my husband, a page from a deteriorating 1926 Altar Missal.
Category: Catholic Free Press, Education, Featured
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Well said.
“It all fits together.”
As my wife and I were on the journey towards the Church I used to often exclaim, “It all knits together perfectly”. This was a test of truth that was very impressive. RCIA was a beautiful experience but more of a formality than an introduction to the Church for me. I was able to recognize a still lingering inclination to “modernize” the Church from some teachers.
As I’ve been coming back to the Church in earnest over the past few years, my Amazon wish list has grown our of control.
A question for you/Jeff/Howard/whoever… I’m a scientist by education as well, I went to a technical university and was never exposed to philosophy. I’m quickly falling in love with the intellectual depth of the Church but feel I’m missing a lot of the background required to understand and then express it to others. Any basic philosophical texts you would recommend? I understand St. Thomas based much of his reasoning on Aristotle…would you recommend reading Aristotle’s works directly, or perhaps a more contemporary treatment of his works?
Thanks
LJP, what a great interest to have. I am not an academic so am not qualified to outline a course of study, I am sure Jeff or Stacey would be.
My background is Artistic/technical as a professional photographer, working in the film industry then as a Systems Analyst in I.T. But my approach to personal learning has always been to “follow my bliss” as the modern teacher Joseph Campbell used to say. Strangely enough both Campbell and the philosopher J. Krishnamurti whom he learned from, both in a small way lead me to the Catholic Church years later.
Not a recommendation, but a legitimate approach.
Typical of God’s Divine Irony that the ultimate end of the collective efforts of 2000 years of Catholic scholarship is that we may become as brilliant in our knowledge of him…as a little child.
As I’ve grown older and weathered the storms of that weekly Inquisition that we call Sunday dinner. I have learned to ask the well educated inquisitors a simple question. Define the meaning of the word “the” in the statement “I am the Way the Truth and the Light”. One need only contemplate the physiology of anything from an ant to the human eye to come to the realization that contemplation of Divinity is sufficient to excite and occupy the entire collective intelligence of humanity, past, present and future. It never gets old, it never gets boring, and the brightest among us (especially Chemists) grow to realize that the further one delves into (real) science there is NO truth that does not have it’s roots in Divinity, for any theorem can be challenged. When, however, one comes to the ultimate question behind all knowledge, “Why”, the only “Because” that is truly sufficient is…”I am that I am”. An answer that only a child can understand.
Val Bianco, I’m eating lunch not dinner but can I take a stab at your question.
The “the” is unnecessary in that phrase or could be taken to mean “the only”.
Pass the chicken please.
Yes, Val, thank you! See, this is exactly what I mean. I’m an intelligent person, I should be able to follow Val’s preceding discourse without any problem…alas. I want to get to the point where I can read that ONCE and say, “Yes, that is exactly right!”, instead of saying, “Yes, I’ll bet that’s exactly right, were I able to grasp it!”
LJP, I had to read it twice. The second time much slower.
Howard, I think you are on to something. I feel the need to ‘work my way through’ books. I should probably instead have the guts to put something down that I’m just not ‘feeling’ and move on.
I have started Pope Benedict XIV book “Jesus Of Nazareth” 5 times. I am now about 1/2 way thru. It is not necessary to understand everything perfectly now or ever. Your technical background teaches you and tests you and reminds you how imperfect you are. God only expects you to try.
Ok, that’s one case where I finally did face my own limits and return it to the library after two renewals and only two chapters. I think I let the fact that I made it through Love and Responsibility swell my head a little.
Thanks! I can’t wait to get done with this stuff I’m working on so I can join discussions more. I love that. I learn so much, LJP, just from good discussions on this blog.
LJP, I don’t really know what I’d recommend because I feel very weak on philosophy too. What you said is EXACTLY how I felt. It is a requirement at Holy Apostle’s where I’m working on a MA degree in theology, that the first course you take is an intro to philosophy. In it, they explain how most universities don’t teach classical philosophy any more. You learn the “middle” the how to do part, but not the beginning and the end, the why we ever needed to know it and what we are supposed to be trying to achieve with it. In other words, we just go to college to get jobs. That was soooo true for me.
I also second what Howard said. I just read now. If I need to stop, I stop (taking a little break now, for instance). It took me 5-6 times before I could finish Fides et Ratio, but when I finally did – oh boy!
And get a Kindle!
I love mine.
One last thing, and I’m not just saying this because Val commented. I’m reading his book right now and it is excellent, a Catholic fiction spiritual warfare thriller. It’s a great story, but one of those stories that teach as you read and you don’t even realize it.
http://www.amazon.com/Sons-Cain-Val-Bianco/dp/0983526214
website: http://www.valbianco.com/
Also, this: http://www.thinveil.net/2011/06/building-catholic-ebook-library-on.html
Great list!
Thanks for the recommendations, Stacy. I think I could use a book of fiction right now…and only $4.99 on Kindle!
LJP, I started a very part-time theology degree seven years ago (just completed my 14th of 20 courses, yay!), including 4 philosophy prereq’s. It might sound silly, but two books I found very helpful were: The Idiot’s Guide to Philosophy and Philosophy for Dummies. They come at it from different directions; one works through the “Big Questions” and the other works throught the “Big Names” in philosophy. I also have a handy reference, 101 Key Terms in Philosophy and Their Importance for Theology, that has been well-thumbed! It all starts to come together, if you keep at it.
Alana,
Thanks! I’ll look into those.
I love that so many here are interested in learning about philosophy.
Sadly, my reputation as a book recommender is dismal. I don’t think I’ve ever had someone tell me they loved reading a book that I recommended. In the typical case, it’s “I read the first page, my eyes glazed over, and I quit.”
So don’t look to me for recommendations. Consider any authors that I mention here as anti-recommendations. You can be sure you will not enjoy reading them.
That said, I can say a little about how to approach philosophy and how not to.
How not to read philosophy is easy. Don’t read these writers as abstract theorists proposing a theory of reality. This is not a college dorm, it’s real life. We’re not here to figure out who has the cleverest system.
The way to study philosophy is to begin to get a firm grip on what concrete questions about real life these specific philosophers were trying to answer. But you mustn’t make it a theoretical exercise. I’m afraid some arguments for the existence of God get wrapped up in the form of brain teasers. Those are “toy” problems, by which I mean problems that have little to do with God, and even less to do with the course of your life.
No, become familiar with the serious, life and death questions that specific philosophers are trying to answer. Here’s an example. Thoughtful people often wonder how it is possible we can know anything reliably. As long as we don’t think too hard, we feel like we can be certain in our knowledge, but if we keep asking “why”, like a 6 year old, we dig ourselves into a pit.
Here’s the question, in modern terms. We see a something coming toward us. The image of that something gets projected on our retina in a sequence of discrete images. But the actual size of that projection changes as the thing gets closer. It was a small image a few seconds ago, but it grows larger.
If the raw data of our sense is a sequence of differently sized cellular and/or neural sketches on our retina, through the optic chiasma, to our visual cortex, how do we know that the something coming toward us is one in the same thing? A something, rather than a bunch of somethings?
Similarly, we feel in real life like we are a “person”. (Here we are getting closer to theology, where the idea of what makes a “person” is important). We remember ourselves as children, as teenagers, as adults. What exactly is it about our memory that assures us we are remembering one in the same person, and not a sequence of different people? What makes me certain that I am the same person I was? And if I’m not going to be the same person I am five years from now, can’t I pretty much do whatever I want because in five years it won’t be me anymore?
Lots of philosophers give up on a serious answer and argue that 1) we can not be certain about anything at all, and that 2) we are not one self, we are multiple selves.
Serious philosophers like St. Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Charles Sanders Pierce, and others, recognize the legitimacy of the world as we find it, they recognize the common sense world as coherent and reliable; as adults, they recognize that the problem is to draw inferences about what must be the case in order to reconcile the problem with the manifest reality of our experience. The grown-up philosophers, like the ones I mentioned, posit that there must be an active, constructive intellect that adds something to sense experience. St. Augustine wonderfully saw it as Divine Illumination. Whatever it is, this something which we possess as human beings defies the paucity of the sensory stimulus, and grants us mere sensory beings a privileged access to things unseen, to things as they are, to the truth. As you can imagine, this draws us to the brink of theology and helps us understand better why our faith is reasonable, and how it answers the very deepest questions we have about life.
St. Thomas Aquinas was possibly the greatest psychologist in all of history. He saw through the flimsy, unsatisfactory answers for how we can be certain of the truth (that we all share one giant cosmic mind, etc.). He rejected these, and proposed that we were created by God with an active, agent intellect.
As you learn philosophy, you study the terminology, like agent intellect. You know the question it was aimed at answering. And as you learn, you find how St. Thomas’ theory of the agent intellect is similar to, yet different from Aristotle’s. Before you know it, you’re becoming a philosopher yourself.
That’s how you start. You must read philosophy as answers to questions that we can be easily made aware of in our concrete life here-and-now. The good philosophers help you by calling your attention to the importance of the question. In any event, only then are we really doing philosophy, in my opinion.
For this reason, my favorite modern philosopher is Gabriel Marcel, a brilliant, Catholic existentialist. How’s that for cognitive dissonance? But now that I’ve mentioned his name, I implore you not to read him. He is one of the writers in the school of theology which my good friend Rick DeLano refers to with no great fondness as Nouvelle Theologie.
P.S. Stacy, best wishes on your final papers. I can’t wait to see them here!
I enjoyed reading this blog and the comments that followed. My major was in psychology and minor in philosophy. I entered the church 2 years ago and on my way in I was shocked to find out that I had never heard of St. Augustine or St. Thomas in any of my college classes. I have also realized that I will not be able to completely satisfy my desire for truth in this life. If this is any consolation to others, even with a minor in philosophy, when I started reading Summa Theologia, I was humbled greatly…I couldn’t understand it at all. So I began reading some of St. Thomas writings on the books of the Bible. Once I got the feel for how he wrote, I went back to the Summa and I keep going back. I also read the CCC. But the book that I found the most helpful for all of the other reading that I do now is Theology for Beginners by F.J. Sheed. I have found that pondering deep questions in prayer…praying that what ever study I do that it aid me in doing God’s will and not mine. As a side note to Jeff McLeod, I have been commenting back and forth with Rick DeLano about an apparent contradiction in the Summa. He has been very charitable in his comments to me.
Peace be with you all,
Alan R
Jeff,
Thank you so much for your insight, that’s a lot to chew on, great advice!
@LJP,
If you want a good intro to Thomas Aquinas thought I strongly recommend Dr. Edward Fesser’s “Aquinas, A Beginner’s Guide” http://www.amazon.com/Aquinas-Beginners-Guide-Edward-Feser/dp/1851686908
Also his blog:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/
Alan R and LJP, nice to see thoughtful people in the comments with me. I really do love the community here.
Alan, I totally agree with you that Rick DeLano is a charitable debater and a solid man, plus, he is clearly in love with the Church. What’s not to love? I always enjoy reading his thoughts.
Colin,
Yes, I’m somewhat familiar with Dr. Feser. Thanks for the recommendation!