Catalyst for Renewal

Recall a time when you ate or drank too much, or you got too much sun because you did not bother to take precautions that you knew you should have taken or you simply did something contrary to good advice. These are moments when we refuse to listen, or if we do listen we do not hear and if we do hear we act in defiance of what we hear. Put bluntly, this is disobedience. Our English word "to obey" has its roots in the Latin word audire, meaning "to hear".

Apart from the psychodynamics of this sort of disobedient behaviour – so typically human and perhaps more likely to occur in the young – we might ask: "What is happening here?" Approach it from another angle: "What should I have done?" I should have paid attention to what my body told me, what experience had taught me; I should have attended to the factors involved in the situation and submitted to what "life" was suggesting to me, or I should have listened to the advice of wiser heads, and so on.

Such mundane situations will be more or less trivial or more or less significant in their consequences. I might pass off the occasional incident of eating or drinking too much with a little embarrassment; I cannot pass off so easily the fact that I have defied the voice of my conscience and wilfully lived out a script contrary to the deepest urgings of my very being and the genuine desires of my heart.

Life calls us into a certain rhythm here. We might call that rhythm the "obedience rhythm". It consists of three interdependent movements:

Consider any human life of depth and wisdom, one of compassion and radical honesty, and you will find this rhythm is a significant part of that life. (And the reverse is also true.) The truly human person is an obedient person and the obedient person actively listens, is keen to hear and heed what is true and real.

Ultimately, what is at issue here is the truth of who I am. The former Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, sums it up nicely:

The truly obedient life, Hammarskjold suggests, will lead one inexorably into a deep sense of vocation, the sense of being necessarily and invulnerably part of an expanding mystery. We could call this the discovery of an existential "must" within one’s depths. All the great men and women of history know this "must" and respond to it with passion. Hammarskjold writes:

"What must come to pass, should come to pass. Within the limits of that must, therefore, you are invulnerable. (Op cit, 48.)

In the concrete human situation it is not always easy to embrace that rhythm of obedience. Within us and around us there are a multitude of forces making listening to what is true and real very difficult. If the listening is interrupted, what we eventually hear and submit to may put distance between us and that existential "must" of our lives. Our lives may thus become radically dishonest, literally unreal, disobedient.

In 1945 the world became aware of The Holocaust and the horrifying depths to which the human race had sunk in and through the Nazi ideology. At the Nuremberg trials – begun on November 20, 1945 – the world heard an utterly rational but totally unacceptable defence: "We were only obeying orders". It was worrying to hear this same appeal to "obedience" used by the two French military operatives who had sunk the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour on July 10, 1985, killing a photographer on board.

The "obedience" spoken of here bears little resemblance to true obedience. True obedience lies beyond social conformity or merely doing as one is told – though it may, as a matter of fact, include both these. Obedience is a process that seeks the True and the Real as such, beyond what this or that person or group might maintain. Obedience does not deny or dismiss the given social order, be it ecclesiastical or secular, it merely relativizes that order in the context of a bigger order. Social conformity is a process which seeks the maintenance of a certain social order, ecclesiastical or secular. Social conformity is also a process by which the individual seeks to be part of that social order. Whether that social order is in any way a manifestation of what is true and real is not relevant to mere social conformity.

Consider, by way of contrast, the "civil disobedience" – the "social non-conformity" – of people like Jesus of Nazareth …. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Edith Stein, Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Mother Teresa and thousands of others who listened, heard and chose to submit to a higher order, sometimes at great personal cost. Who would not recognize, for example, in the choices made by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Edith Stein, something far more deeply true and good – a far more genuine obedience – than the choices made by those Nazi officers in their "obedience"?

Cardinal John Henry Newman knew the obedience rhythm, he was a man who felt the demands of life’s "must" and he submitted:

1. Describe the obedience rhythm in your own words. Give an example from your life.
2. Describe a simple experience in which you defied the obedience rhythm of life. What happened?
3. Have you ever known someone who entered generously into the obedience rhythm of life? Reflect.
4. Have you ever experienced the peace that comes when you are in harmony with life? Reflect.
5. Do you think you know how to listen to the "higher order" in your life? Reflect.
6. Has the call of obedience ever placed you in a situation of social non-conformity? What happened?
7. Reflect on your experience of life’s "must"?
8. What is the most difficult thing for you in embracing the obedience rhythm at depth?
9. What helps you to be an obedient person in the deepest sense of that word "obedience"?
10. Express John Henry Newman’s thought in your own words. Give an example from your life.

Catalyst Suggestion Sheets are written by Michael Whelan SM and published by Catalyst for Renewal Incorporated in conjunction with the Catalyst journal, The Mix. For further information please contact: Catalyst for Renewal Incorporated, PO Box 139, Gladesville, NSW 1675, Australia. Tel/Fax: +61 2 9998 7003.

2010 Programs

Paddington

3 March “I feel passionate about Spirituality in the Pub”   Speakers:  MICHAEL WHELAN sm, Director of The Aquinas Academy &  GERALDINE DOOGUE, ABC television, radio presenter and author. Both Co-founders of Catalyst for Renewal and Spirituality in the Pub

7 April “I feel passionate about global justice”

 Speakers:  BEN SPIES-BUTCHER, lecturer in Economic and Political Sociology at Macquarie University &  JENNIFER BURN , senior lecturer in Law at UTS and General Editor of the Immigration Review. 5 May “I feel passionate about being uploaded”.  Speakers tba

2 June “I feel passionate about Reconciliation/Healing”. Speakers tba

7 July “I feel passionate about storytelling”.  Speakers: MARY LEAHY rsj, Chaplain to the Merchant Navy at Sydney Ports & tba

4 August “I feel passionate about parenting”. Speakers: RABBI JACKI NINIO, Assistant Rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Woollahra. and PETER CERNEAZ, single parent and artist.  Moderator:  JULIE McCROSSIN

1 September “I feel passionate about an inclusive society”. Speakers tba

6 October: “I feel passionate about where the hell we find God in tough times”. Speaker: RICHARD LEONARD sj, director of the Australian Catholic Film Office  Responder: tba

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Contact PAULINE O'NEILL (Secretary) directly on catalyst-for-renewal@tpg.com.au Tel: +61 2 9990 7003

Last modified: November 06, 2009   

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