Anxious About Joy
I've been reading a lot of Fr. John Catoir lately, whose Advent meditation booklet was sent to everyone in the parish (chosen by a parish committee).
My reflex reaction to his homilies of joy (including a "dance for the Holy Spirit" preface) was not pretty. It was to Google his name and see if he's got heretical opinions. Have we really gotten to the point where joy = heresy? Yet, too often the orthodox (self included) are sad sacks because we believe in sin but don't fully believe in mercy.
Perhaps the challenge for the Fr. Greeleys of the world is to be joyful without "defining sin downward" or lowering the standard. The challenge for the "conservative" side is to be joyful despite the prevalence of sin. No wonder the combination is so rare.
Fr. Catoir writes that the great enemy of joy is anxiety. But anxiety cannot be reduced by "preaching another Gospel", by maternalizing God or diminishing the danger of hell.
Might the problem be that moderns aren't as tough as our ancestors in this age of anxiety, perhaps due to constant technological change, rootlessness, a lack of strong families, or affluence and worship of comfort? Might we also not drink as much alcohol, thereby forfeiting some natural courage? *haha*.
My hunch is that the "maternal God" folks of the world are mostly reacting against something - against the way they were brought up, in the hard '50s American Catholic Church where mortal sin was but an impure thought away. The '50s church collapsed like a house of cards in the '60s, suggesting a weakness. But the cures - i.e. listening to James Taylor as a devotional exercise and introducing liturgical dance - were worse than the disease. Fr. Andrew Greeley seems to think the '50s Church was joyless (I don't know since I wasn't alive) but the alternatives, executed in the '60s & '70s, have flopped.
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