Friend and brother Aramis over at Four Mass’keteers raises an essential question, indeed what should be but is not a predominant concern in the West; namely, the initiation of young males into manhood and fatherhood. In his words, "young people need hands-on initiation/expanding/deepening/challenging continuing faith experiences."Prior to the Industrial Age, sons apprenticed alongside their fathers at their trades: in the field, in the guild, in the family business. After the mechanization of labor, fathers went off and worked, then came home, usually exhausted, seven-parts humiliated by their jobs, and oft-times given to hiding behind the paper in stony silence.
For my part, after school till I was seven, I went next door to where my father was a church pastor (my mother was in nursing school). I went with him on pastoral visits, and watched him work. Sometimes I helped fold church bulletins for Sunday services. Then, in the 4th and 6th grades I had a male teacher, Mr. Johnson: ever trustworthy, encouraging, interest-building in subjects.
For all my adult work-life, I have been (a) a Protestant pastor (20+ years prior to my entering full communion with the Catholic Church), and (b) now a Catholic educator these 7 years. Hmm. See any connections in these two paragraphs?
While I rarely agree with mythologist Joseph Campbell, on one particular point I agree: the armed forces do a great job initiating young males into manhood. But one should not look for Catholic faith, morals, or truth from that experience; wrong fruit from the wrong tree.
And, as Gil Bailie notes (somewhere), that is only for those who find their way into the military. Those countless millions who don't have to fill this developmental need in a catch as catch can manner. No father at home? A gang may be the only source for this mentoring; or a cult; or (fill in the blank).
Franciscan Richard Rohr presents an outstanding introduction to the problem.
Initiation only works when there is a collective spiritual wisdom into which the boy can be introduced and which is agreed upon as rich and valuable by the vast majority of a people. In a deconstructing culture, there is nothing to initiate a young man into except perhaps his private male sensibility. This is fine and even necessary, but it does not create a coherent culture or a safe and sane civilization. For rites of passage, we've moved toward the only collective-agreed-upons we have: sports, education, work, Boy Scouts, and war. Coaches and drill sergeants, smoking and driving, money and merit badges, graduation and girlfriends have become our only mentors and rites of passage. They all have something to teach us, but no one is there to say "you must hear God in this," or "your soul is at stake here." That is the power of the "liminal" and transformative space called initiation.
Life will eventually initiate you anyway, but it might be too late or you might not comprehend the sacred significance of things while they are happening. Without initiation it is a disenchanted universe. All we can do is calculate and control because no one else is in control, at least no one we have met or can trust. An uninitiated man lives in an isolated body and a disconnected world. He must take personal responsibility for creating all the patterns and making all the connections-if there are any. It is an unwhole, incoherent, and finally unsafe world. No wonder the typical young man in our non-mythic culture spends so much time posturing, climbing, and overcompensating. In his heart he knows it is all not true-and therefore not sacred.
A truly initiated man, however, lives inside a sacred universe of meaning. Even the seemingly absurd, even the pain has meaning. Perhaps no world religion deals so directly and effectively with the issue of human suffering as healthy Christianity. The crucified and raised-up Jesus is an ultimate transformation-initiation symbol. The sacraments of initiation that were fittingly celebrated throughout Lent and the Easter Triduum were the liminal space that initiated new Christians and "re-initiated" the old into the sacred mysteries. Now, when I speak of the mysteries, some Christians seem not to know that there were any. This is the tragic result not only of centuries of non-initiated Christians, but of the lust for certitude and predictability that has characterized the Western church.
1 comment:
To the commenter in Spanish: I'd enjoy reading what you have to say in English. Mi Español is muy malo.
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