KARL KEATING'S E-LETTER
TOPICS:
DRAWING THE COUNTRY, DRAWING THE CHURCH
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
Take a look at a world map, preferably one without country borders. Now take a marker
and lay out, in North America, where you would set the confines of the United States
of America if you were doing so from scratch.
You might start, somewhat arbitrarily, around the northern end of Puget Sound and draw
a line straight east until you come to the Great Lakes. After that, you might follow
the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean. That would set the northern boundary.
To set the southern boundary, you might start, on the Pacific side, at about the
latitude of the top of the Gulf of California, simply because it's a convenient
geographic feature. (You could choose the Isthmus of Panama instead, but that would
make for too large a country.)
Another eastward line would bring you to the Gulf of Mexico around Louisiana, and
after that you just follow the coast until you round Florida and reach the Atlantic.
Of course, the western and eastern borders of the country would be along the
coastlines, so that decision is easy.
After all this you would end up with a rough approximation of the outline of the 48
contiguous states, with a little of Canada thrown in and southern Texas dropped out.
What you chiefly would be missing would be Alaska and Hawaii. There would be no
antecedent reason to include either. You might as well draw a circle around Kenya and
call it part of the U.S. It just wouldn't seem to fit, speaking purely geographically.
When we think of countries, we think of them not as scattered, non-contiguous parts
but as single entities that approximate regular mathematical shapes (circles, squares,
rectangles) except where topographic features, such as mountains and lakes, intrude.
Of course, some countries end up looking like gerrymandered congressional
districts--long snakes of land going this way and that, but everything connected
together anyway. Still, in our minds a new, abstract country will have a simple border
that can be drawn without lifting the marker up from the map.
If we were charged with setting the border of the U.S., working from no prior
information or history, we might, as I say, end up with something close to the 48
states, but we certainly would not end up with far-flung portions such as Alaska and
Hawaii.
And yet that is precisely what we have because countries are not formed by
cartographers playing with markers. They are formed over time, haphazardly, sometimes
unwittingly, even accidentally.
Only a few countries have obvious and "natural" borders, and most such countries are
islands: Australia, Britain, Sri Lanka, Madagascar. (Staten Island?) Everyone else
lives in a country the shape of which is largely arbitrary.
The Church is arbitrary too, in a way. If you were given carte blanche to set up the
rules for religious life, would you establish the multiplicity of orders we now
have--old ones, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits, and newer ones--some
established in our own lifetimes--too numerous to list?
Probably you would decide the Church would have more than enough variety with, say,
three orders, somewhat on Henry Ford's principle that if people wanted a car, they
wanted it in black.
Much the same might be said of modes of spirituality. Most older religious orders have
one or more such modes associated with them. (When we hear "Franciscan spirituality,"
we have in mind something quite different from "Benedictine spirituality.") And there
are other spiritualities, such as the charismatic, that are not associated with a
particular order.
Would you, with plenipotentiary power, have set up so many (often overlapping)
expressions of spirituality? Not likely.
In your generosity you might say, "Okay, we'll allow two or four, but that's it. What
possible need could there be for more? There is only one goal, after all--heaven. It's
fine to have the direct route and a few scenic routes, but there is no need for a
zillion routes." But a zillion modes of spirituality is about what we have.
Or consider church architecture: Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Modern Barn. And endless
combinations and interpenetrations of these--and others--over the centuries. Some of
these styles have proved lasting, and some have lasted too long.
Whatever our personal preferences, we can agree that the variety of styles
demonstrates--how shall I put it?--a disorderliness. If we were tasked with deciding
how churches should look, we would end up with a short list of permissible facades and
floor plans. We would be quite orderly but dull.
What comes from all of this is that most ecclesiastical floor plans do not interest me
or do not inspire me devotionally, most modes of spirituality leave me cold, and
(speaking somewhat out of turn as a layman who never will enter religious life) most
of the religious orders in no way attract me.
But that's me. You may differ on each point. I say "tomayto" and you say "tomahto." A
church I can't pray in may be one you can pray up a storm in. A religious order I
don't give a second thought to may be the one you find most fascinating. A form of
spirituality I find off-putting may be the one that gets you off your duff and onto
your knees.
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