I love the Catholic Church and am blessed to have been shaped by it. It has anchored my life and kept me oriented toward the good. It has educated me, inspired me, employed me, ordained me, and helped me through difficult times. Like many other things that I love—my family, my country, my home—I always want it to be its best and to improve where it can.
Like many Catholics, I grew up quite naïve, accepting everything that nuns taught us in school as well as what priests preached on Sundays and parents reiterated at home: that God spoke Latin, that if you miss Mass on Sunday you’ll go to hell, that contraception is equal to murder in the sin column, that pagan babies are for sale, that by entering seven different churches on All Souls Day and saying certain prayers you will get a certain number of souls out of purgatory and into heaven… As an adult in the church, I have witnessed corruption from within, abuse of power that stings, bureaucratic leadership that harms, politics that rivals the worst of any government system—maybe it’s all just part of the messy sausage-making process.
Twentieth century French philosopher and theologian, Paul Ricoeur, developed the concept of a second naïveté to point to a stage in life when people can embrace the reality of unpleasant systems and functions yet also rise above them to regain meaning and purpose in religious language and structures despite ruptured practices. With critical insight and renewed understanding we can accept incongruent things such as the Bible containing complete truth while also containing inaccuracies and inconsistencies or that the church demands every member to uphold all that it teaches when most clearly don’t. Not unlike Richard Rohr’s second half of life spirituality or David Brooks’ second mountain, the second naïveté helps us overcome negative or draining actualities, like growing old or suffering trauma or set-back, by embracing things that are spiritually enlivening or promising.
Recently I asked an elderly parishioner what she believes when she professes the Creed at Mass stating, “I believe in God…”? Does she simply believe that God exists, or does she believe in God like she believes in her best friend to be trustworthy? When she proclaims it, does she believe that God will fulfill every divine promise? And does she believe in God as presented by the Bible and church, or as an immense mystery that is unfathomable? She caught me off guard by responding that she doesn’t recite the Creed with others, who tend do so rapidly and somewhat vapidly, but simply says “I believe in God” and then gets quiet for the minutes that follow—minutes filled with babbling words racing all around her that characterize God and, therefore, seek to capture and limit God who is beyond all limitation. It reminds me of the opening line of Max Ehrmann’s epic poem, Desiderata: “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence…” The years taught her a wisdom that elevates her relationship with God above words or pledges; it takes her to a second mountain with higher understanding, to a second half of life that releases all that the first half tried to hold, to a second naïveté which surrenders to a reality that returns us to our innocent first beliefs while also accepting human foibles, ugly practices, and mischaracterizations. The second naïveté essentially takes to heart Ehrmann’s concluding line, “…With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”
The church and world are, indeed, beautiful graces when we give them a second look.
