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Description
Abstract
For some decades one has noted an increased interest in spirituality outside the traditional religions of the West, viz the three monotheisms. New spiritual quests often develop on the fringes of the churches, and sometimes even as a reaction to the churches' vision of what it means to be human. In this regard, those interested in spirituality often see their spiritual search as something linked to a general care for wellbeing or health, and reproach Christianity for being too disembodied. The association of the spiritual with the therapeutical leads to a certain permeability between the spiritual and therapeutical in terms of the claims each makes. It also leads to the creation of new alternative proposals. This porousness runs the risk of bringing confusion to everything, and using the spiritual and religious to serve therapeutic needs.
However, the way in which the claims of the spiritual and therapeutical realms evolve presents a challenge to Christianity. This can be put in terms of, "What place does Christianity attribute to the body, affectivity, pleasure, and legitimate personal development?' Some individuals and groups in the Christian churches, rather than trying to justify existing approaches, propose more "incarnated" ones that will respond to the new audience in a Christian way. From a theological, pastoral and missiological viewpoint, Christian communities are thus intended to become communities of healing and reconciliation, although not at any price. If Christian spirituality also has to favour the empowering and development of a person--for Christ has assumed everything of humanity, except sin--one should not reduce salvation to healing or ignore the paschal mystery as a way of avoiding the element of pain that this mystery contains. In short, Christianity is invited to do a work of inculturation that not only keeps in mind contemporary developments but also is accompanied by an authentic interdisciplinary discernment.
Introduction
Since the beginning of human society, there has existed a more or less tight link between religion and health, and between spirituality and human growth, with different emphases according to traditions and cultures. The priest was sought as a healer and the traditional chief as a protector of the life of their people by virtue of their privileged relationship with the world of the invisible. In all the major religious traditions, there exist rituals, practices and mediators that promote and heal their followers.
One would think that with the Enlightenment and the progress in science and secularism, the distinction, if not the separation between health and salvation would now be complete. Even within Christianity, notwithstanding the extensive engagement of the churches in the field of healthcare, (hospitals, etc.), there has been a progressive distancing with regard to the idea of "healing", as distinguished from the idea of care, with consequences for traditional rituals, such as the anointing of the sick. If the value of pilgrimages and of saintly healers has never completely lost its merit in the practice of "popular" religion, church institutions have distanced themselves from an emphasis on the therapeutic effects of the sacraments.
However, in the West, we are noticing an important evolution in respect of our contemporaries with regard to health and spirituality. More and more, a connection is being made between spiritual quests and therapeutic practices. One no longer disassociates spirituality from human growth, even if organized religion does not have good press. The credibility of a religious or spiritual group is evaluated in terms of its capacity to foster healings or, at least, foster a harmonious, balanced personal life.
It is not a question of returning to ancestral practices or to anti-modern behaviour. Nor is it a question of a "returning to religion". The latter does not hold currency for three reasons. First, religion has never disappeared from our cultures. Therefore, it is not a question of a simple "returning". Additionally, the religious and spiritual spectrum that we see has no precedent in history. Never has a society had access to so many religious propositions. Finally, it is not a question of a returning to "religion" per se, for it is as much a return to the order of the "repressed" as it is to religion. I allude here to the emphasis placed on emotion, on the attraction toward the invisible, sometimes towards the irrational, and on the promotion of the body, of the cosmos, etc. This phenomenon cannot be reduced to a simple return to paganism, as some Christians have had a tendency to do. Sociologists prefer to speak of a "recomposition" of beliefs.
Here, the rapprochement between spiritualities and therapies is seen as much at the level of personal quests, as it has been at the level of new spiritual and therapeutic propositions that are on the increase in our societies. This evolution has produced a sort of porousness between the therapeutic and spiritual fields. Often, the requests for meaning, and sometimes for salvation, are addressed to caregivers who are not prepared to receive these types of requests.
In addition, there are great expectations for healing--inner, psychic and physical--among those who are following a spiritual way. They expect answers and progress from religious institutions or their "masters" in their quest.
Among these followers there are those who are also searching for meaning, for an absolute, for God. From their point of view, Christianity in general and its churches, the Catholic Church in particular, are severely criticized. For example, there is a lingering effect of 17thcentury Jansenism and other caricatures of Christianity. The churches are accused of being 'disincarnate', suspicious of the body and of the emotions, and, if not scorning it, then of valuing suffering for its own sake, and promoting the idea that the will of the almighty God does not allow any space for personal liberty or for the evolution of a hesitant, stammering quest.
Conformity with the system, with its institutions, must be complete in one's beliefs and one's ethics. It is "all or nothing". One is either "inside or outside". We can certainly ask ourselves about our own responsibility in continuing these negative images of the church. There are a number of baptized persons of goodwill who have decided, once and for all, to go and look elsewhere. Is there not here a call for a work of inculturation of spirituality? For Certeau, it is, "... a spirituality [that] responds to the questions of the time and never responds except in the very terms of the questions, because it is these questions that the people of a society are living and talking about--be they Christians or others." (1)
To understand this development in peoples' perceptions of healing and spirituality, and to allow the churches to be questioned by their criticisms of them, whether justified or not, it seems to me that it would be useful to carefully consider the shifts in thinking that we are seeing.
1. How spiritual and therapeutic quests come together and intermingle today
1.1. A new "spiritual" quest (2)
We must not overestimate the importance of this spiritual quest just because there is still a majority of persons for whom spirituality has little importance. If I put the adjective "spiritual" in quotation marks, it is because there also exists a secular and even an atheistic approach to spirituality. Not so long ago, spirituality, atheism and secularism seemed to be radically opposed. We must clarify this point.
More and more people searching for happiness, growth and spirituality are becoming involved in a "spiritual" quest. The expression "spiritual quest" is purposely taken in a large sense as a quest for interiority, for self-knowledge, along with a certain openness to the transcendent, to the ultimate. I refer here only to spirituality when the search for interiority is open to what transcends the person. For F. Lenoir, this implies a belief in several levels of reality, including a 'trans-sensible' level. (3)
In addition, many people consider that they have lived a real spiritual experience, although, at the same time, they insist that they have no, or no longer have any religious affiliation. They argue, sometimes too rapidly, that spirituality is an authentic, free, responsible and unique quest, in opposition to religion, which they see as a socio-cultural system of closed dogma and the imposition of conformity. Therefore, religion is incapable of respecting the unique quest, and would only become involved in it as a way of managing the divine as something owned or exclusive.
Contemporary "spiritual" trajectories are marked by a certain fluidity and by a practicality in the search: it is a question of experimenting and verifying. Human development and the mystical quest are most often associated. These quests often evolve outside the major religions and develop parallel paths to church institutions.
In these quests, there exists a large spectrum of attitudes between two extremes. On the one hand, which is most often the case, there... |
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