God Without The Sacred
A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment … is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. – Ayn Rand
We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.
Edward de Bono
Today, more than ever, institutionalism is at all-time low.
Not only in the church, but also outside its walls.So, what is the sociology behind this? Why now? What makes this period in history so special? I think if we look into the current schema of the Catholic Church and the issues that have been haunting them, we might find clues to why we are where we are. The Catholic Church has had a sordid history; this is almost common knowledge. In the pre-catholic cosmos, in the paleolithic era, a lot of dispersed tribes worshiped a goddess. Yes, the female was the center of the world, not the male. Although, there isn’t compelling evidence for the following claim, there are irreducible anthropological traces that propose that the due to jealousy, the male counterpart in these tribal communities [who were, for the most part, the physically strongest], ended up creating a new pantheon of male deities to rival the now seemingly defunct female goddess.
The entrance of patriarchy begins. The man is the leader. The man is the one who has a final say. Hierarchy runs not far behind. In the ancient world that pre-existed patriarchy [yes, there was such a world], there was a more of an egalitarian, role-based community, not where power was central, but rather where the community goals superseded the any politics. Don’t get me wrong, it was not a perfect setup, but it was a much better option than we currently have at the moment. The place of the Catholic Church today resides in a state of stagnancy. Although, I know the new pope [Francis] is holding a lot of influence, even now, in the Liberal camp of Christian discourse, the institution as an institution is waning.
Institutions rely upon antagonisms to sustain their existence. For the Catholic Church, it is not that the issues themselves are indicative of the spirit of Catholicism but rather are inherent to the system of institutionalism. Sexual abuse. Gender equality. Birth Control. Premarital Sex. Don’t these issues sound similar to the current landscape of the Church? That somehow these issues mirror something larger than both bodies of faith. Meaning, that these issues are societal. They have become ingrained in the structure of social relations. But, at the heart of these issues lie something a bit more sinister, however, at first sight would seem to be the answer to these THINGS.
Idealism is evil.
Before you think I am overstating my case, let me explain. Idealism: the promise of the whole, the desire for a totalitarian response to all of life’s problems, global hunger and so on rely upon the very system’s of injustice it seeks to remove. To maintain justice, one must also have injustice. Idealism rests on the possibilities of a ‘better world’; the operative letter/word in that sentence being: ‘a’. It is subjective. We all bring our own versions of the ideal with us [i.e., the ideal life, the ideal version of peace, the ideal version of ethics, of humor and etc.] – like theorist Slavoj Zizek once said: If you have more than one-person in a room, someone’s ‘fantasy’ [his word for paradigm/worldview] is going to be sacrificed. And it’s true. This will always be a characteristic of our subjectivity. Someone will always lose. Hence, why some hope for utopia, but, therein also ‘lies the rub’…the desire of perfection will always need a scapegoat, it will need someone [or bunch of someone’s] to make the sacrifice. So, what then? Do we not try? Do we continue on living in mediocrity and referring to it as passion? No, but as long as we claim that reality cannot exist without structures, we will always have the problem of idealism.
Jesus in defense of ‘terrorism’. Well, ideological terrorism, that is. Against patriarchy [to Nicodemus]. Against injustice. Against institutions.
Jesus, a Palestinian Rabbi I think points to a possible way out of such a deadlock. What, you ask? Destroy the temple […Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again…]. Okay, here’s where we go in a peculiarly different direction than traditional scholarship and approach Jesus’ words as what I call, a literal metaphor. Meaning, we take his words both at face value and as a metonymy for a larger meaning. What if Jesus was, yes, talking about himself, but also using himself as what the temple stood for – a body, a structure. Something that mediates our understanding of reality, truth, and etc. That the temple had lost its validity. Why? Because it was doing something for (on our behalf) us. It was promising something, that Jesus would eventually claim, wasn’t there. It was standing-in for an absence. At the same time, what if when he points back to himself […and I will raise it again in three days…] he was implying something quite radical. That essentially, we don’t need the structures. That within us are the very structures we have been hiding all along. That to continuously rely on and create structures does violence [negates us/alienates ourselves] to the very essence hiding within the possibility of our humanity.
Is the Catholic Church relevant anymore? As an institution, no. It too readily commits treason against human subjectivity. But, I would be remiss if I did not include in my critique all other institutions that mediate on our behalf. It was when Neo was removed from the Matrix [ a fantasy/structure/intepretation of reality] that he begins to not only view reality as it is, but also realize that within [the kingdom is:within] is where the abilities to access the potentials of our humanity exist. I think this wouldn’t be a bad place to start!!
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