Tuesday, April 12, 2005
SYMBOLS
are essential to matters of faith because God is beyond man’s physical senses. He is totally "Other". Christ knew that once He left the earth, people would still need something to hold on to, something physical that they could see or hear or touch or smell. He chose bread and wine, substances that are readily available, because the faith He was passing on to us was not meant for an exclusive few, but rather meant for all of the humanity God the Father would create, and so the material that made Him present for these human beings would have to be readily available.
We have other symbols that make the reality of our faith present to us in a physical sense. We have the water of Baptism, the oil of Confirmation and Extreme Unction, we have wedding rings. We can look at these substances and know the reality behind them that is beyond our physical knowledge.
Our faith is enriched by the sacramental symbols. We have other symbols as well, the cross and the crucifix, icons, statues, medals, scapulars, holy water fonts, prayer books, and many others. All of these symbols have the same purpose, to make God present in the moments of our lives.
John Paul II was a phenomenologist. It’s a difficult word to pin down. More than anything else it seems to mean a willingness to look closely at what is present before our eyes. What we experience. He would have told us to see Christ in all of it by looking beyond the phenomena to what lies behind it, what motivates it, what meaning it has in the eternal progression of time. He was not afraid to see what is really there.
Out of what he saw, he developed a philosophy of life that was always focused on the Trinity, on God, on Jesus Christ. His faith was the center of everything else he encountered. He was eager to see God in materiality, or to see where God had been excised from it. He tried to pass that wisdom along to us.
Scripture tells us that the weeds and the wheat shall be left to grow up together until the harvest, and so we know that not all we encounter is of God. Symbols can have meanings that are not conducive to faith. Symbols can be corrupted. Symbols can be redefined. Weeds can choke out the wheat.
In an age that kept religions segregated, this was not important, since we didn’t encounter the symbols of other faiths. Today we have religions in confrontation. This is most especially true on the internet where all religions play an equal part on the web stage, and thus all symbols are presented to us for our consideration.
As we encounter other faiths, we encounter other meanings, sometimes for the same symbol. Now the substance that is meant to help us encounter the Living God has become a symbol that aids us in encountering other gods or other expressions of the same God which are in error. Sometimes the symbol is wheat, but sometimes the symbol is a weed.
What are we to do about the weeds? There are several approaches. We can ignore the other meanings attached to the symbol. We can nuance those other meanings into something orthodox and use the symbols with their new meaning. Or we can confront the reality that our symbols are out there in the marketplace of ideas and new concepts are being attached to them that are not Catholic. There are dangers to the faith in each approach.
If we ignore the other meanings attached to the symbol—remain silent about those other meanings—the risk is that members of the laity will believe that the others who use the symbol mean what we mean by it. The sheep will be lead astray.
If we nuance those other meanings into something orthodox and use the symbols with their new meaning, the risk is that not everyone will get the message and will still go astray by taking up the meaning that lies outside the faith.
If we confront reality as it arrives before our eyes, identifying the fact that the symbol has more than one meaning, providing evidence that there is a danger lurking, we run the risk of having someone accuse us of believing what we have rejected.
Those who use the symbols by attaching non-Catholic or non-Christian meanings to them know fully well what they are doing. They know that the symbol has very great potential of morphing doctrine into something they are more comfortable with. Conveniently, when confronted by the dominant faith, they can easily say “But you have the same symbol, so why does this upset you? Believe about this symbol whatever you wish. We have no rigid doctrine, unlike the fundamentalists.” All the while, of course, they will be talking about what they believe. And they will be talking about the inadequacy of the symbol to completely convey meaning. And then they will add that perhaps both meanings are valid.
This is a relatively new reality for the majority of Catholics. For the most part, Catholics, when confronted with this reality are confused because they do not know what they are encountering. The Church has not yet determined what to do about this because the Church has not yet acknowledged the problem. But it will have to be addressed because too many are being led astray.
Here is another example of what I’m talking about. Notice the rose above the cross. What does it mean?
It actually can have a truly Catholic meaning, though the juxtaposition of the rose is illogical. The rose represents the Rosa Mystica—the Blessed Virgin. The cross, of course, is Christ. Mary would never rise above Christ, so the symbol is faulty even from a Catholic perspective. But there is an even more heretical meaning to the symbol. A rose and cross represents the Rosy Cross, symbol of the Rosicrucians. Who has borrowed what from whom in the case of the Franciscan website is anybody's guess.
