In Defense
of Orthodoxy
I’ve had a number of interesting
conversations this week about religion.
First, I had a very respectful and I think fruitful discussion with some
Mormon neighbors. I also had a very
respectful, but I suspect not fruitful discussion with the atheist neighbor
with whom I engage from time to time.
The most surprising, however, was with a fellow Catholic over orthodoxy.
Orthodoxy, of course, means “right
belief.” An orthodox Catholic is someone
who accepts all the teachings of Christ as revealed through His Church, and
doesn’t pick and choose whichever ones are attractive, leaving the rest.
Often, Catholics who disdain orthodoxy
do so because they take offense at the condemnation of some sin to which they
are particularly attached. In this case,
however, my friend suggested that orthodoxy was an obstacle, fencing me in so
that I could not break out and fully experience the Spirit.
I respect this friend very much, so I listened
to what he had to say, but I must admit, I could not relate. It’s sort of like saying that my experience
of mathematics will be stunted by my slavery to the laws of mathematics. Orthodoxy is rather like a pair of wings
without which a Catholic will never be able to soar to spiritual heights.
Or, to use the fence image in a proper
context, Archbishop Fulton Sheen tells a parable of some explorers who came
upon a seemingly uninhabited island. All
around, the beach led to a steep cliff.
So the explorers scaled the cliff to find at the top, a flat plain with
a fence around the edge. Inside the
fence was a colony of children who were running and jumping and playing.
The men called to the children and said,
“Who put up this fence? Don’t you see
that it is robbing you of your freedom?
Do away with it! Be free!” And they tore down the fence.
A few months later some other men
happened upon the island. When they
climbed to the top of the cliff, they did not see children running or jumping
or playing. They were all huddled
together in the center, afraid of falling over the edge.
When the fence was there to keep the
children safe from peril, they were free to run and to explore and to
grow. The same is true for us. The Church has defined for us certain Truths
that she did not create – they came from Christ. If we allow them to protect us, we are safe
from falling into deadly error, and we are free to run and to explore and to
grow.
No one ever saw more clearly by
walking away from the light. And no
one’s experience of God ever became deeper because they unshackled themselves
from Truth.
Rather than turning our backs on
teachings that are difficult or uncomfortable, let us seek to understand
them. And rather than expanding our
vision of God in a way that we no longer recognize Him, let us seek to know Him
better. We can acknowledge, like St.
Paul in Athens, the goodness of our non-Christian brothers and sisters, and
even the relevance of their religious experience, while still claiming that
“there is no other name [but Jesus] by which we are saved.”
“For this reason have I come, to
testify to the Truth,” said Jesus before Pontius Pilate. We need not be ashamed to admit that while we
may not have a monopoly on the truth, we do have the fullness of the truth.
