How We Change the Direction of the Wind with Ronald Rolheiser (Part 2)

In the second part of Ilia Delio’s conversation with Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, Ilia asks what Ron’s hope is for the future—is it the church? They share their concerns for theology and doctrines which are increasingly out of touch with the current state of the world, and consider whether a secular religion is possible. Ilia also asks Fr. Ron his opinion on the viability of common appeals for a “spirituality without religion.”

ABOUT RONALD ROLHEISER

“Faith is not a question of basking in the certainty that there is a God and that God is taking care of us. Many of us are never granted this kind of assurance. Certitude is not the real substance of faith. Faith is a way of seeing things.”

Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, Ph.D., is a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. He is a community-builder, lecturer, and writer. His books are popular throughout the English-speaking world and have now been translated into many languages. His weekly column is carried by more than 80 newspapers worldwide. He taught theology and philosophy at Newman Theological College in Edmonton, Alberta, for 16 years, served as Provincial Superior of his Oblate Province for six years, and served on the General Council for the Oblates in Rome for six years. From 2005–2020, Fr. Ron served as President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio Texas. He remains on staff at OST as a full-time faculty member.

Transcript

Robert: Welcome back to Hunger for Wholeness, a podcast from the Center for Christogenesis. I'm your host, Robert Nicastro. The second part of Ilia's conversation with Father Ron Rolheiser opens with the religious question many of us have. If the church has a future, what is it? Later, Ilia asks Ron what he thinks about “spirituality without religion” and whether a secular religion is possible.

Ilia: Given Pope Francis' deep concern for the Earth, the Encyclicals, Laudato Si, Laudato Deum, where do you see where we are today with regard to the church? Do you think it's possible to realize the ideals of Laudato Si, for example? Can we really have a sustainable planet of interdependent life or not?

Ron Rolheiser: Well, two things there. First of all, and maybe I'm biased here, but the churches, it's our only hope because I think through secular, which some of which is good, is not going to get us there. You've just seen what happened in the last conference that just ended. There's some progress forward but nothing's enforceable and fossil fuels are going to keep going on and so on, so I think that this is a moral thing for the churches and people of faith and people of goodwill. Put it this way, it has to happen. It has to happen or there's no future. You know, I sometimes argue with nephews of mine who are young people and said, "Oh, I don't believe in global warming." I said, "You're going to have grandkids. You want any oxygen for them on this planet?"

You know, I'm going to give you a wonderful line. I know it's a soundbite, but I like it from Jim Wallace, the Sojourner guy in Washington. And Jim Wallace said, he says, all politicians are the same. He said, they put their finger up in the wind, and which way it's slowly, that's the way they're going to go. And he said, and that's never going to change. That's never going to change. He said, so we have to change the wind. We have to change the wind, and with the whole ecological thing and so on, we got to change the wind. It has to be led by people like the Pope and so on, the churches, but we got to get sincere people of all on side and say, look, and it's not a tough case to argue, said, do you want oxygen for your grandkids? There isn't going to be any unless we do something.

Ilia: You know, the situation is rather serious from where I can see in terms of the data on global warming and water pollution. I mean, the amount of plastics in the ocean is just simply alarming. The landfills of the unused clothes and landfills just stuck with materials that cannot be degraded—so biodegradable. But I do wonder, I guess, and I appreciate the finger pointing, that there's where the wind blows. I'm kind of stuck on artificial intelligence. You can see, because I've been working a lot in this area, and I think we have to think a little bit differently. I wonder because AGI, artificial generalized intelligence is right around the corner. And what I think is going to challenge us to do is reframe our systems themselves. I don't think the systems can last. I don't think it's a matter of goodwill. I think we have the goodwill, but it's insufficient to really move the dial towards a sustainable planet unless we have a systemic change. In other words, the systems themselves need to be kind of deconstructed and reconstructed along the lines now that are more aligned with nature, which would be lines of complexity, lines of interrelatedness.

I mean, I could actually see reframing these systems, maybe not as politics and culture and sociology, but maybe a new complexified form of institutional leadership. So one thing I think is we need greater imagination and creativity in how we reframe the very entities that support our life. And as much as I truly admire Pope Francis and his endeavors, I don't think it's going to achieve the aim for which it sets. Although I completely agree with you, unless we do that, I do think we face a very dire future, quite honestly. So I think we have to begin to align ourselves with what is nature? What are we? What are we as part of nature? This is very Teilhardian. Teilhard says, we are a fact falling in nature. That's the beginning of his human phenomenon. And if we don't understand what nature is about, we're not going to understand what we're about, fundamentally. And then understand why technology is emerging. It's always emerged. I mean, we've always been techne, this is nothing new, but now it's kind of ramped up, its speed. And we have to begin to kind of align the principles of Catholic social thought of the ideals of Laudato Si with what we are.

You know, one of the things I would propose maybe is the church embracing evolution. I think we cannot keep it as arm's length which we do. We can't just pay it lip service, which we do, because people are actually fundamentally, they don't know what to think. Science is telling us, and it has tons of evidence to say, we emerge by way of evolution. And the church has this idea that somehow we have a special creation by God, and we're noble creatures that have a soul. And honestly, at the end of the day, it really doesn't make much sense. So people are grappling, they're struggling to understand these two things.

Do you think it would be worth the church opening up really to evolution and therefore, opening up maybe to a new way of conceiving ourselves, even doctrinally, that maybe we can't have a fixity of doctrines. Maybe we have to begin to rework these doctrines within the deeply enriched pluralized world of evolution?

Ron Rolheiser: I hope I'm wrong with this, I mean, I hope I'm right, I think at least at the levels that you and I work at theologically, the church has not just embraced evolution. It's basically we're working with it. You still have, you know, since certain fundamentalists circles and so on, but I don't think they're important. And even there, they're losing ground. But one of the things I want to pick up on what you said, which to me I don't think people always pick this out, how important that is in Teilhard. But where Teilhard says, as a human being, we're not above nature. We are part of nature that's speaking. We're not speaking above nature for nature, we're part of nature. I'm that place, and you are that place in the universe where nature has been conscious and speaking the same as the tree and so on. See, so we're speaking inside, and I think that's where we've got a different anthropology that, and maybe that has to be recognized more so that—we've always had even and being standing outside of nature, speaking for nature, I think the great Teilhard said, no, no, this is nature speaking.

Ilia: That's exactly right, Ron. That's it.

Ron Rolheiser: You're a tree that's grown conscious that's speaking. See, so that's a shift in anthropology. And the other thing I think that we need to really emphasize, and you're seeing it now more, and that is the importance of what we call deep incarnation, so that Jesus came, where Christ came not just to save people, but to save the planet. Not just the people on the planet. A number of theologians are calling that deep incarnation, and when I wrote Holy Longing and I have two or three chapters in incarnation I'd need to rewrite that now and have a fourth chapter in deep incarnation, so that Christ is not just a human phenomenon. Christ is as Teilhard says, it's cosmological phenomenon. That's the part of theology and spirituality we need to keep developing. You know, the part of the incarnation.

I see two pieces to it. One of them that we need to shift an anthropology that speaks from within nature. The biblical anthropology tends to give you the impression that you're standing outside above nature and you're advocating for Mother Earth, whereas Teilhard would say you're part of the voice of Mother Earth. This means that every atom that's suffering or whatever is also praying. And then the whole question of that, the mystery of Christ is so much bigger than the mystery of just kind of historical Christianity in the churches. Not that that mystery is unimportant, but that's a small part of it, you know, that Christ is a much, much bigger phenomenon. And the whole thing about—we talk about Christogenesis, but also the Christosphere, which I think also has the huge implications for world unity and other religions and Buddhism and Hinduism and so on. You know, let's see, nobody goes to Father except through Christ.

Robert: In the Christian theological vision, the whole earth is being slowly rectified. This vision is not exclusive, but deeply inclusive. Not only of all people, but of all life and even matter itself. Next, Ilia laments some of the less helpful doctrines that still haunt us, and asks Ron his opinion about the common appeal for spirituality without religion. And later, they discuss the importance of community and Ron's hope for the future.

Ilia: As you were speaking, I couldn't help but think, deep incarnation and deep personhood are actually two sides of the same deepness, the same depth—keeping Jesus, just as this savior who came to save fallen humanity, who's a special creation of God. All of this has bode us not well, and we have really neglected our, in fact, we've been completely unconscious of our relationship to the earth being created above nature, so to speak, or creation as our background to human drama. But Teilhard just have to put a plug for him, because he learned of Scotus' notion of the primacy of Christ from Father Allegra, a Franciscan. He read about, or I don't know if you remember Allegra or he read Allegra's work. And that's actually how he began to realize what he was actually intuiting in his own way, was actually formulated into a doctrine by Duns Scotus back in the 14th century.

And I think Teilhard quite honestly is very deeply Franciscan at heart, even though he was a Jesuit, because he has that notion of Christ is first and God's attention to like, there's a primacy of Christ here. And that makes the universe, exactly as you're saying, we have meaning. It's not a meaningless universe. It's a meaningful universe, but science can't tell. It can't. That's not what science does, by the way. Science can tell us how things work, but in a sense, theology will tell us or give us insight as to why things are moving. And I think if we have a sense, and I think what you're saying here, Ron, and I'd love to see how this could be emphasized and deepened, for example, in liturgy, in how we teach, how we catechize our younger generations.

Because once young people realize, wow, I belong to the earth, I kind of know that because I have this sense of wanting to work for echo justice and then to realize that God's love is that love throughout every aspect incarnate, throughout every aspect of the natural world. And now brought into an explicit consciousness in my own life that, that what Jesus is about a sense is what I'm about too. And coming into that deeper awareness that the love of God, God became human so that we could become God. In Athanasius or Iraneaus’ words, “the glory of God, is the human person fully alive,” fully alive, which means fully alive in the world in which we're actually live in. And sometimes I get frustrated with the church's theology because it remains a little bit fixed and tied to doctrines like original sin or the atonement theory.

And they become more and more unbelievable. And I think it creates a gap in people's lives. They don't know they want to be faithful, they want to be committed in their religion. And yet, they're like, well, I don't quite understand how all this comes together, kind of how they get this in students. So my other question would be, is your position on spiritual but not religious. You know, do you see, maybe if we were to bring a deep incarnation and deep personhood into a new meaningful framework, could we maybe see a new role for maybe a new secularized religion? You know, a secularized incarnation, the Teilhardian idea, there's nothing profane below here for those who know how to see the whole world is filled with divine love.

Ron Rolheiser: And let me ask you; spiritual and not religious? Again, it's one of those things that it shouldn't be universally condemned or universally demonized. You know, let me speak to its good point. Remember we've been talking about the transcendental properties of being, God is one true, good and beautiful. So somebody who's spiritual, they're going to be relating to that, they're going to be relating to God's truth, God's oneness, God's beauty, whatever. So in that sense, they are religious. That's that. So that religion doesn't have to be necessarily identified with baptism inside of a Christian Church. That's the upside. The downside I fear, which is not so much religious, is our culture I fear is becoming pretty radically individualistic.

You know, we have a sociologist of religion in Canada, sociology of religion, Reginald Bibby, wonderful man. And he says he said, "Notice people are treating their churches in the same way as they're treating their families. They want them around, but not much." I think that a lot to be learned from that. The negative part is that, I'll put it philosophically, we are adult children of René Descartes. You know, we talk about adult children, he said, I think therefore my reality's real. It's made us the freest generation ever, but also we struggle with an individuality. One of the things Christianity tries to call us to is to kind of incarnate community. You know, like you have to deal with some community somewhere for real, not just abstract. The good part is, the people I know who are spiritual but not religious, many of them are wonderful people who are relating to God as one true, good and beautiful. They're not a bad person to them as your neighbor. The downside is, I think we have to keep challenging ourselves and the world about community. You know, the French philosopher, Charles Péguy, great line. He said, "When you die, you get before Jesus. He's going to ask you one question. He says, where are the others? Why are you here alone?" And I think that has to be incorporated into that question.

Ilia: But if I tie that back to where we began this conversation on the holy longing, right? Where are the others? There's a longing to belong to another, right? There's a longing for that absolute being in love, but that longing is also for one another. The very thing we long for is the very thing we reject right now. And that's really the strangeness of being human.

Ron Rolheiser: One of, to my mind, Teilhard's great insight and where, for instance, I separate him from Eastern religions and so on, very sophisticated. And that is that, see, community and an individuality art in competition. That's it. The more caring you become, the more individual you're going to become and vice versa. You know, kind of the old thing, if they cut somebody off completely from human communication, they'll eventually go insane. So the more you come into unity, the more it's actually going to heighten your individuality, so that community and individuality, they feed each other. And the more I cut myself off from community, the less I'm actually going to be myself as an individual. It's a paradox that I don't think our culture, like I said, we're adult children of René Descartes. I think there I am, I'm not sure real everybody else is but I think we can also be, like Teilhard's insight is you're going to be much, much more aware of your own individuality, the deeper you move into community, and vice versa.

Ilia: On a very practical basis when you're alone, and loneliness is one of the great melodies of our age. I think people of all different economic levels are feeling very isolated because of basically, we can live behind a computer screen and never really be in any real relationship with anyone else. So I do think we are deeply related and relationship is what defines us, basically. And if I'm alone, I have to, in a sense be everything. Like, I have to support myself. I have to rely on my instincts, but when you're together, and part of the thing is, what does it mean to belong to another? And that means accepting one another with our frailties, our limits, our incompleteness. And I think sometimes we don't do well with the incompleteness of being human. We want others to think like us and look like us and be like us.

But I think of other cultures like the African culture of ubuntu, where I am because we are, so what we are is the very basis of my I-ness, my beingness, my existence. And therefore, if you want to take Descartes, I think therefore I am, maybe it can be like, I love because we are, and if we can move toward that. I do think love is our deepest reality. I think every single person on this planet seeks to love and to be loved. And I think that love is the completion of ourself in another. There's something of that other that in that exchange of the good that's in me with you, that there's a complementarity of being that enhances what I am and what you are.

And so I think that it, my goal, my hope, and I think Teilhard has something of this; it's not expelled completely, but in his view, omega, it is the energy of love. It's the presence of love. He tells us that in the human phenomenon. And I think that's what he really sees, is that there's a drive to move towards the maximization of conscious being in love. You know, which is the greatest diversity, the beauty of the rich plurality of who we are in this amazing planet of life with every aspect of trees and flowers and animal life and creaturely light. So I do think I am concerned even sometimes in terms of theology, how abstract doctrinaire we are, doctrinally correct, incorrect, the abstractions of Greek metaphysics and Greek philosophical principles. And I'm saying can we come back to some concreteness, the concreteness of our existence of the trees and the flowers? And this is where I think indigenous spirituality, as you well know, is helpful in this regard. You know, that the spirits that flow through me flow through everything else.

Ron Rolheiser: One of our kind of on the ground distinctions between spirituality and theology, we always say theology is important. It makes the rules, but spirituality is the game. In fact, for instance, baseball has rules, but it's not the game. You know, dogmas, they're very important. They're the rules, but it's not the game. Spirituality is the game. It has to play within certain rules. But I think in the past, too often we got theology mixed up with the game. It's just like we're teaching the rule book. You know, teaching the rule book is not very exciting; you have to know the rules, but spirituality is, how are we doing this? How are we living it out?

Ilia: What is your greatest hope right now? What do you hope for? What would you leave to our listeners in this hunger for wholeness?

Ron Rolheiser: Well, I'll tell you what, I want to end with a story on hope. And it's one of my favorite Teilhardian stories. I read this somewhere, and I don't even remember where I read it. I'm still trying to track it down—way back. But Teilhard was giving a talk one time to some audience who were a little skeptical, and he was showing how the Ephesians him is basically what's going to happen with all of cosmic and stuff together. And someone said, "Well, that's a wonderful little schema. What if he blew up the world with atomic bomb? What happens then?" And Teilhard says that would be a setback of some millions of years. He said, "Well, what I say is going to happen, not because I believe it, or I wish it." He said, "Because God promised it." God promised it. And he said, and in the resurrection, God shows that God has power to development the promise. So the Julian of Norwich says, 'In the end, all will be well, and all will be well and every manner of being will be well." Teilhard says, "That could take some setbacks." I like this expression. Could set back a million years, but it's still going to happen.

Robert: A special thanks to Father Ron Rolheiser for being with us and sharing his theological vision. Next week, we're excited to host a conversation with leading process theologian, Bruce Epperly, thank you to our partners at the Fetzer Institute. As always, I'm Robert Nicastro. Thanks for listening.