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| Thomas Merton on Ordination Day. Used with permission of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. |
ON OBEDIENCE TO A SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR
“When commanded to go to Rages young Tobias answered, ‘I do not know
the way,’ and his father replied, ‘Go then and find some man to lead you.’ I
say the same thing to you, Philothea. Do you seriously wish to travel the road
to devotion? If so, look for a good man to guide and lead you. This is the most
important of all words of advice. As the devout Avila says, ‘Although you seek
God's will, you will never find it with such certainty as on the path of that
humble obedience so highly praised and practiced by all devout writers.’”
(Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, I, 4)
“Request your spiritual director to command you to do all the devout
actions you must perform since they will thus be better and have a twofold
grace and value. The one comes from the deeds themselves because they are works
of piety; the other from obedience that accepts such command and in virtue of
which the acts are done. Blessed are the obedient for God will never let them
go astray.” (Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 11)
Thomas Merton writes, “One must not imagine that one owes strict
obedience to the spiritual director. A director is not a superior. Our relation
to him is not that of a subject to a divinely constituted juridical authority.
It is rather the relation of a friend to an advisor.”
—Thomas
Merton, Spiritual Direction and Meditation
(1960), page 48
Merton’s interpretation diverges from that of Saint Francis de Sales.
They belong, after all, to different circumstances and periods of history.
If the spiritual director speaks about abstaining from moral evil, we
should obey because we are obliged under God’s law. If the director speaks
about pursuing moral good, it would be advisable but not obligatory, unless
failure to do so is a sin of omission. In all other cases we are not obliged.
We grow in our capacity to judge well and to make our own decisions as
we grow in our understanding of life, its depths and nuances, as well as in our
experience of the spiritual life. Discernment of spirits improves as we mature.
For this reason, it is difficult for youth to evaluate the advice of a
director, and conversely, it is easy for a director to abuse his spiritual
authority, especially if the director is himself simply recapitulating his own
experience.
The spiritual director is potentially the source of the worst advice
imaginable in this life, and in this respect, Saint Francis de Sales is WRONG.
We are NOT obliged to obey the spiritual director. Only exception is in the
aspect of abstaining from moral evil.
“Directors should reflect that they themselves are not the chief agent,
guide, and mover of souls in this matter, but the principal guide is the Holy
Spirit, who is never neglectful of souls, and they themselves are instruments
for directing these souls to perfection through faith and the law of God,
according to the spirit given by God to each one. Thus the whole concern of
directors should not be to accommodate souls to their own method and condition,
but they should observe the road along which God is leading one; if they do not
recognize it, they should leave the soul alone and not bother it.” (Saint John
of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, III, 46)
Here in my view based on personal experience are some of the pitfalls
of spiritual directors:
- Belief of the spiritual director in their personal infallibility as a
spiritual guide and in their peculiar—I might even say idiosyncratic—discernment of the spirits by virtue of their grace of
state
- Presumption in specific instances or a tendency toward presumption
- Want of relevant theological and scientific knowledge—I would note
that Saints Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross are particularly critical of
this deficiency
- Immaturity, that is, limited relevant human experience
- Incapacity, whether through lack of knowledge or experience, or some
fault of character or inadequacy of motivation, to engage in dialogue with the
person being directed, that is, a dialogue that goes to the root of problems in
the spiritual life and that obtains as thorough and accurate an understanding
as possible of the state of the spiritual life and related conditions
- Tendentious accusatory approach, sometimes tainted with ascetical
excess or possibly even Jansenist
- Desire and intention of the spiritual director to impose their
conscience on the person being directed
- Unethical disregard of, possibly even insupportable repudiation of
the rights of a person in spiritual direction, particularly the right to
privacy and the right to informed consent
- Absence of profession by the spiritual director of an explicitly
published and properly vetted code of ethics
I would add that the above faults or transgressions are particularly
characteristic of spiritual directors who assume the directive model of
spiritual guidance, wherein it is the spiritual director who is the locus of
the discernment of spirits, not the person being directed.
There is indeed value in a third party providing their own judgment
about the affairs of the spiritual life because this point of view is prima
facie more objective. However, the spiritual director is not infallible and the
person who receives spiritual direction is in the end answerable to God for
their decisions and actions so that the final locus of discernment and ultimate
responsibility for making a decision must be the person acting according to
their own conscience.
Notably, this imperative always entails an existential burden.
Within reason, the spiritual director must respect the conscience of
the person being directed even if objectively speaking it appears that the
person is mistaken.
There are of course instances wherein a course of action is obviously
erroneous, harmful, or even destructive to the person being directed so that
the spiritual director is consequently justified in taking proportionate steps
to intervene, according to ethical norms.
SPIRITUAL DIRECTION IN OPUS DEI
ReplyDeleteA spiritual director today is not going to get by on traditional Roman Catholic spirituality alone. A psychology background sufficient to recognize problems and refer someone properly is necessary.
“People who seek a spiritual guide or companion expect psychological insight or at least a lived awareness of human dynamics. The need for fundamental knowledge of human psychology is based on Christian incarnation, which assumes that God works in and through the ordinary processes of human growth and development. …the director should be able to recognize some of the typical symptoms of psychological or emotional disorder, disability, or disease. There should be some minimal recognition of the distinctly different developmental processes and psychological dynamics between men and women. Finally, it is of the utmost importance…for the director to have the humility and knowledge to recommend that emotionally troubled directees seek professional clinical intervention rather than using pop psychology to handle their problems.”—Frank J. Houdek, S.J., Guided by the Spirit: A Jesuit Perspective on Spiritual Direction (1996), page 137
Opus Dei directors have zero background in clinical psychology, as a rule. They rely on medieval Thomistic psychology—unscientific, in some important respects simplistic—which ignores the major advances in scientific clinical psychology and is besides primitive and inadequate to vital clinical applications today.
Supervision, experience, and maturity—the latter comes with age—of the spiritual director is also necessary for them to be effective. Much harm—lifelong damage even—can be done by youthful, immature spiritual directors who depend on their theoretical understanding, sometimes inadequate—due to obstacles imposed against accessing relevant scientific or theological knowledge, or for whatever reason—without any or sufficient grounding in practical applications, which is to say, reality.
“Some spiritual fathers are likely to be a hindrance and harm rather than a help to…souls…. Such directors have neither understanding nor experience of these ways. They are like the builders of the Tower of Babel [Gen. 11:1-9]. When these builders were supposed to provide the proper materials for the project, they brought entirely different supplies because they failed to understand the language. And thus nothing was accomplished.”—Saint John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Prologue, 4
The above problems can be significantly avoided by appropriate supervision, which over some years should lead an inexperienced spiritual director to acquire adequate, if imperfect, competence.
Although relevant theological knowledge is necessary in spiritual direction, interestingly, in the opinion of Saint Teresa of Avila, it is not absolutely so.
“It is very important that the master [spiritual director] have prudence—I mean that he have good judgment—and experience; if besides these he has learning, so much the better. But if one cannot find there three qualifications together, the first two are more important since men with a background in studies can be sought out and consulted when there is need. I say that if these learned men do not practice prayer their learning is of little help….”—Saint Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, Chapter 13, 16
I would underscore that if a director lacks relevant theological knowledge—human beings are limited, after all, in their capacity for knowledge—then it should be sought out by the directee from the proper sources.
Often enough Opus Dei is obstructed in the task of spiritual direction because its primary agenda is not to help people spiritually but to propagate itself. The organization relies on a self-serving distillation of historical Roman Catholic spirituality—something that suits the objective of propagating the organization but that clearly does not address the spiritual needs of many because it is narrow in scope and deficient in understanding.
Gonzalinho
Spiritual direction in Opus Dei is compromised by its overriding objective—which is not the spiritual good and well-being of the person being directed but rather the propagation of the institution of Opus Dei and the protection of its reputation. Underlying this agenda is a theology that ascribes infallibility to Escriva as the origin of a divine mandate and an encompassing spiritual regime. It is a type of idolatry, in my view.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, spiritual direction in Opus Dei relies exclusively on a narrowly interpreted religious-ascetical framework that is inadequate to dealing with psychological issues, which inevitably arise in managing Christian spirituality, because the human being is an embodied soul, with psychological and related bodily dimensions deriving from their corporeal nature.
Gonzalinho
Some persons who go to Opus Dei for spiritual direction need psychological counseling and the help therefrom. Opus Dei priests need to be trained so that they know how to recognize this need and to refer the persons appropriately. Because the Opus Dei agenda is recruitment, meaning, enlistment and subsequent indoctrination in the Opus Dei religious culture, spiritual direction in Opus Dei can seriously and gravely worsen what is already a damaging state of affairs. Not everything or everyone should be forced into a religious box.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
EQUAL-MINDEDNESS OF THE SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR AND THE PERSON BEING DIRECTED
ReplyDeleteThe task of the spiritual director is to guide the person being directed according to the will of God and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, discernment of the spirits must be exercised on the part of BOTH the person being directed the spiritual director.
A critical condition for discerning correctly is “spiritual detachment.” Spiritual attachment is an inordinate attachment to creatures, desiring them for our own self-serving purposes, so that spiritual detachment is its opposite—the desire for creatures and use of creation for the ends for which they have been created, the service and love of God.
Someone who is inordinately attached to creatures will naturally have difficulty in discerning correctly, because they will be drawn to make choices out of weakness of will and for their own self-serving purposes.
Spiritual detachment has been described as “Ignatian indifference.” A better term, in my view, is what Father Mitch Pacwa, S.J. calls “equal-mindedness.”
“When it comes to dealing with good, legitimate options, I can either make a decision by the seat of my pants, or I can really seek to determine what God is asking of me. …If we want to do what God wills, then we can be open to any possibility, because God our Lord made everything good, including riches, poverty, or a relatively simple lifestyle. God can work through people with wealth (many saints were kings and queens) or through very poor people (St. Francis of Assisi and many other saints). These various possibilities are good in themselves, and therefore they are ways to become holy and to give glory to God who made them. How do we choose among these good options?
“If God can use everything and everything is good, then an essential starting point of being able to discern God’s will is the gift of being ‘equal-minded.’ St. Ignatius of Loyola called this gift being ‘indifferent,’ but some modern people interpret this term as not caring about the choices. Better is the term ‘equal-minded,’ which implies that I am happy to take either this option or that option. Neither option matters to me except insofar as one gives greater glory to God than the other. Seeking to give greater glory to God is one of the most important principles of discerning God’s will for my life.”
—Fr. Mitch Pacwa, SJ, How to Listen When God Is Speaking: A Guide for Modern-Day Catholics (2011), pages 72-73
If discernment of the spirits is to be exercised for the spiritual benefit of the person being directed, BOTH the person being directed and the spiritual director have to seek and pursue equal-mindedness in spiritual direction.
Gonzalinho
THE CASE OF OPUS DEI
DeleteOften enough Opus Dei is obstructed in the task of spiritual direction because its primary agenda is not to help people spiritually but to propagate itself. The organization relies on a self-serving distillation of historical Roman Catholic spirituality—something that suits the objective of propagating the organization but that clearly does not address the spiritual needs of many because it is narrow in scope and deficient in understanding.
Spiritual direction in Opus Dei is compromised by its overriding objective—which is not the spiritual good and well-being of the person being directed but rather the propagation of the institution of Opus Dei and the protection of its reputation. This type of spiritual direction has the potential to inflict grave harm and lasting damage on the person being directed because the objective of the spiritual director is not the spiritual welfare of the person being directed but rather the corporate agenda of Opus Dei.
When the spiritual director is principally motivated by the corporate agenda of the organization he represents, he inevitably lacks an attribute necessary for promoting the spiritual benefit of the person being directed: equal-mindedness. The spiritual director is not primarily motivated by the spiritual welfare of the person being directed but rather by the corporate agenda. The two are not necessarily aligned.
Gonzalinho
An important exception to obedience to religious and spiritual authority is when the authority is not legitimately constituted.
ReplyDeleteThis situation obtains, I submit, when basic human rights are violated.
In the case of Opus Dei in particular, the right of conscience, the right to information, and the right to informed consent, among others, are violated.
Aggravating the injury, the institution adamantly insists on an absolutist type of religious obedience for the members, the laity in particular, under the penalty of committing a mortal sin otherwise and threatens eternal damnation.
Gonzalinho
Religious and spiritual authority must not only be legitimately exercised, it must also be legitimately constituted in order to entail any obligation of obedience.
ReplyDeleteGonzalinho
REQUISITE CONDITIONS FOR THE OBLIGATION OF RELIGIOUS OBEDIENCE
ReplyDeleteOne way in which the obligation of obedience is legitimately constituted in the Roman Catholic Church is by means of public or private vows. The matter of vows calls for a closer and more careful look because vows impose an obligation of obedience and from the standpoint of the Roman Catholic religion they do so legitimately.
The juridic aspect of vows is taken up in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, canons 1191-1198.
The canons are not simply legal imperatives but they are also theological claims and practical directives.
Vows are founded on a theological basis and are exercised in a theological context. They are based on religious understanding and practice.
Vows are practical—they are put into effect in a manner that directly, substantively, and sometimes radically affects the lives not only of the vowed but also of those who receive the vow and who exercise religious and spiritual authority in the name of the Church and of God to oblige observance of the vow and compliance with it, and who thereby assume the role of religious superior with weighty religious and moral obligations.
Title V of the Code describes vows (and oaths) as “…acts of religion that have a sacred character and impose obligations of religion. …Vows and oaths are, moreover, juridic acts which have juridic effects.”
“A vow, that is a deliberate and free promise made to God about a possible and better good, must be fulfilled by reason of the virtue of religion.”
What are some of the conditions under which a vow is legitimately constituted?
Specifically, under what conditions is the obligation of religious obedience, meaning, obedience to a religious superior, made operative and brought into effect?
Commentary (in quotation marks) on the canon law provisions cited below is taken from John D. Beal, James A. Coriden, and Thomas J. Green, eds., The New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law: Commissioned by the Canon Law Society of America (New York, New York: Paulist Press, 1999), pages 1416-1420. See:
https://www.franciscanpenancelibrary.com/vows#:~:text=A%20vow%20must%20be%20made,vow%20and%20has%20no%20effect
—“Public and Private Vows in Roman Catholic Church,” Franciscan Penance Library, 2016
To be continued
Gonzalinho
REQUISITE CONDITIONS FOR THE OBLIGATION OF RELIGIOUS OBEDIENCE
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Canon 1191 §3 A vow made out of grave or unjust fear or malice is null by the law itself.
Commentary
“A vow must be made with sufficient deliberation, knowingly, and with due discernment. The object of the vow must be something good; otherwise, it is not a vow and has no effect. …it must be something better, i.e., better than not doing it, or better than its opposite.
“…The vow must be freely made, i.e., without grave and unjust fear, or as a result of malice. A vow made under such circumstances would be invalid. Fear is grave when, in order to escape some serious harm that is perceived, a person sees no alternative other than to take the vow. Fear is unjust if it is inspired by a threat that is not deserved; it is just if it is inspired by a threat that is deserved.
“…Malice (dolus) in the context of this canon is the deliberate act of lying or of concealing the truth in order to get another person to make a vow which he or she would not do if the truth were known, or in order for oneself to get permission to make a vow, which would not be permitted if the truth were known.
“…Also invalid is a vow made out of ignorance or error concerning an element which constitutes the substance of the vow or which amounts to a condition sine qua non (c. 126). Ignorance is lack of knowledge; error is mistaken judgment. Ignorance or error invalidates a vow if the person vowing lacked knowledge of, or erred in judgment about, something that is of the substance of the vow.
“…A condition sine qua non is one which is so important that the vow would not have been taken if it had been known that the condition was not verified or could not be fulfilled.”
The first point we would make is that a vow of obedience is done with informed consent, in the words of the commentary, “with sufficient deliberation, knowingly, and with due discernment.” When the right to informed consent is not satisfied, the obligations of the vow are undercut and even lose their obligatory character, possibly entirely.
In the case of Opus Dei, this condition is violated when the Opus Dei member is required to profess the religious vows, in particular, the vow of poverty, and then repeatedly told over many years that they are lay, not religious—a claim which is contradicted by the obligatory profession of the vow itself.
The right of informed consent is further violated when the member is told that the religious community to which they belong does not possess common property but rather that all the members own private property and exercise their right to it—and then years later, in a turnaround that amounts to a betrayal of trust, that they are obliged to sign over their entire private property (which might be very substantial) to a corporate vehicle that the organization legally controls, and that this surrender is required of their ongoing commitment to the organization—a condition to which they never consented at the start!
To be continued 2
Gonzalinho
REQUISITE CONDITIONS FOR THE OBLIGATION OF RELIGIOUS OBEDIENCE
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The above illustrates additional conditions under which the obligations of the vow of obedience would be nullified, namely:
“…Malice (dolus) in the context of this canon is the deliberate act of lying or of concealing the truth in order to get another person to make a vow which he or she would not do if the truth were known.”
Malice is not definitively assumed here but rather it is posited that malice could be an underlying factor, especially since recruitment into the organization, what Opus Dei euphemistically terms “apostolate,” represents the very raison d’être of the organization.
“Also invalid is a vow made out of ignorance or error concerning an element which constitutes the substance of the vow or which amounts to a condition sine qua non…. A condition sine qua non is one which is so important that the vow would not have been taken if it had been known that the condition was not verified or could not be fulfilled.”
Still another condition that undercuts the obligation of obedience in Opus Dei is when the organization as a matter of religious conviction, that is, according to its corporate theology, repeatedly threatens that the member who chooses to leave is likely to be damned in hell.
“The vow must be freely made, i.e., without grave and unjust fear…. A vow made under such circumstances would be invalid. Fear is grave when, in order to escape some serious harm that is perceived, a person sees no alternative other than to take the vow.”
We opine that it is a better decision to never join Opus Dei under the aforementioned conditions, because to join entails the explicit, insistent threat of eternal damnation, whereas the opposite, not joining, does not.
Put another way, why knowingly take on the threat of eternal damnation when it is very well possible—and we might add, well attested by the history and tradition of the Roman Catholic Church—to pursue a solid Christian life, even attaining exemplary holiness, outside the confines of Opus Dei or any similarly maddeningly restrictive religious organization in the Roman Catholic Church?
Besides, joining Opus Dei when the right to informed consent has been gravely violated renders the insistent threat of eternal damnation upon departure from the organization unjust, besides the fear that arises therefrom.
To be continued 3
Gonzalinho
REQUISITE CONDITIONS FOR THE OBLIGATION OF RELIGIOUS OBEDIENCE
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Finally, it is highly disputable that joining Opus Dei is a better good than not joining the organization for the principal reason that the spirituality and the theology upon which the institution is built is in important and major respects questionable, objectionable, and even demonstrably immoral.
“The object of the vow must be something good; otherwise, it is not a vow and has no effect. …it must be something better, i.e., better than not doing it, or better than its opposite.”
Opus Dei’s claim that Saint Josemaria Escriva is infallible when he defines the spirituality of the organization—infallible, meaning, that the founder speaks for God directly and mirrors the person of God in his actions—is untenable.
Denial and violation of fundamental rights in Opus Dei, systemic duplicity, overbearing and insupportable thought control, and psychologically damaging cultic practices represent, among others, attributes of the so-called Opus Dei spirit that can hardly be said to proceed from God. They rather appear to reflect the autocratic, flawed, and deleterious convictions of Escriva himself.
To be continued 4
Gonzalinho
REQUISITE CONDITIONS FOR THE OBLIGATION OF RELIGIOUS OBEDIENCE
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Canon 1194 deals with cessation of a vow.
Commentary
Canon 1194 A vow ceases by the lapse of the time designated to fulfill the obligation, by a substantial change of the matter promised, by the absence of a condition on which the vow depends, by the absence of the purpose of the vow, by dispensation, or by commutation.
“A vow ceases to bind…
“(2) when there has been a substantial change in the matter promised, i.e., the thing promised becomes impossible or wrongful whether in itself or due to circumstances, e.g., one vows to attend Mass each year at a certain church and the church is closed, or one vows to give a large donation to the parish building fund and it becomes necessary to use the money to pay for emergency medical care;
“(3) when a condition on which the vow depends no longer exists, e.g., one vows to fast every day because of obesity, and the excess weight is lost; …”
The obligation of vowed obedience in Opus Dei—or simply obedience, which in Opus Dei is represented in an absolutist manner as obligatory—is nullified by at least the following conditions that have been observed, as expounded earlier and above:
“substantial change of the matter promised”
“…the thing promised becomes…wrongful…in itself”
“absence of a condition on which the vow depends”
Gonzalinho