Spirituality needs emotions, feelings, and choices

It is not surprising that psychologists insist on the importance of emotions for our quality and meaning of life. Yet, in 2018 it is still a pioneering effort for exegetes of Biblical literature to welcome at a congress psychologists who speak of the fundamental emotional aspects of our experiences of the world around us on the basis of how we experience ourselves (Aichhorn, Wolfgang, and Helmut Kronberger. 2012. “The Nature of Emotions. A Psychological Perspective.” In Yearbook 2011. Emotions from Ben Sira to Paul, edited by Renate Egger-Wenzel and Jeremy Corley, 515–525. Berlin: De Gruyter. 515). Emotions make possible the experience of individual meaning, of how we remember and what we remember, they are most relevant for our decisions and actions and help create personal relationships and interactions (ibid.). Within the mother-child dyad emotions are essential for development of the child’s personality, identity, and psycho-social integrity (ibid.). Fear, anger, happiness, disgust, contempt, sadness and surprise, envy, grief, feelings of shame and guilt are basic emotions. “Facial expressions, gestures, postures and vocal utterances” are physical responses linked to emotions; affects do not need any conscious cognitive representation; they are recognized by others as observable behavior and induce “within others similar emotions (mirroring), thus providing the basis for empathy, i.e., emotionally understanding another person” (ibid. 516). Emotional mirroring also functions with texts and enables meaningful interpretation of texts across centuries and cultures. Conscious perception of emotions from sensory information circuits of the central nervous system, neuronal regulation of emotions, and autonomously regulated vegetative and endocrine reactions to emotions are basic functions of the brain (ibid.). Long-term memory is only possible if the remembered experiences are emotionally important to us (ibid. 517).

Visual contact with the mother in the first year of life and later with other persons is of great importance in a child’s physical and psychological development (ibid. 518). The mother’s eyes and the feelings they express are of great interest for the baby and this face-to-face interaction influences both sides (ibid. 517). We may speak of psychological or social feedback, a matching of the emotional patterns of the mother and the baby that creates a “psychophysiological state similar to that of the other person,” that is something like a mutual or reciprocal understanding (ibid.). Concerning the development of emotions, safe attachment provides a high level of positive affects that allows a balancing of positive and negative emotions (ibid. 518). If the mother is not capable of reflecting the infant’s internal state and reacts only to the child’s outwardly shown behavior and constantly fails to relate emotionally to her child, “the baby will respond with dejection, turning away from its mother and will withdraw” (ibid.). On the other hand, “spontaneous response to the feelings of three-year-olds promotes their mentalization skills and emotional understanding,” emotional self-regulation and continuous differentiation of emotions “that also include cognitive aspects” (ibid.). If an empathic caregiver is able to correspond to the signals that the child provides, “a reciprocal information exchange is begun,” emotions and communication come together, “the baby is able to signal his or her needs as well as influence the caregiver” (ibid. 519). Proximity, sociality, and commonality are expressed by laughing and crying, “seeing another person cry touches us deeply and creates a bridge of empathy” (ibid. 520). We understand crying as an expression of loss and pain that “helps us to accept loss as a loss” and get on the way to reorientation “without having to deny our loss” (ibid.). By crying we again get in contact with “our painful experience that was interrupted through anger” (ibid. 521).

The mother-child dyad permits the development of empathy and the exchange of reciprocal information not only on the basis of gestures, facial expressions and vocal utterances. With time emotions and communication help develop an understanding of the use of words and the rules of the language games, the mother empowers the baby and child to speak and engage in speech-acts. Prenatal experiences already influence the development of the baby’s later emotions.

Understanding what we feel and experiencing our emotions is an important aspect of assessing our personal integrity as a physiologic, psychic, social, spiritual, and cultural individual. “Social behavior is mainly linked to affective regulation” and cognitive regulative functions play only a minor part in our daily efforts for well-being and happiness (ibid. 524). Nurturing and culturing a balanced emotional life on the basis of experiences of empathy is the foundational principle of being empathic and practicing love, of mutually assuring our dignity and nearing the equal dignity, liberty and freedom of all women, men and queer.

If we desire to read testimonies of emotions concerning faith and religious experiences from the individual person of modern European Christianity, that develops with Martin Luther’s Reformation and the Catholic attempts at conciliar reform, we may turn on the Catholic side to Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556). Inigo was born into the Basque nobility in the house Onaz de Loyola. At the age of 16 he left for Arévalo near Valladolid and Salamanca to acquire protection and education at the palace of Don Juan Velázquez-Velasco, whose wife was a relative of the Loyolas. Don Juan Velázquez-Velasco held the office of Contador Mayor de Castilla, that is Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Kingdom of Castille, that was about to expand to an empire of global dimensions. Don Juan Velázquez-Velasco was one of the most trusted and privileged vassals of King Ferdinand. When Ferdinand died in 1516, Don Juan Velázquez-Velasco lost all his privileges, offices, and control over Arévalo. Ignatius lost his protector and his remaining possibility for a career was the military. Don Antonio Manrique de Lara, viceroy of Navarra, took Ignatius into his service as an officer. In May 1521 Ignatius was wounded when the French army shelled the fortress of Pamplona that Ignatius was desperately defending with only a handful of soldiers. Pamplona surrendered and Ignatius was taken by the enemy to the mansion of the Loyolas to heal his leg that had been smashed in heavy shelling by the French artillery (Tellechea, Ignacio. 1991. Ignatius von Loyola. Zürich: Benzinger. 45-73).

During the long and painful healing process Ignatius’ way of viewing the world changed. From reading religious texts as well as observing and reflecting on their effect on his state of mind and mood Ignatius developed a culture of giving attention and importance to his emotional states. Fifteen years after first leaving home, he left a second time. He embarked on a pilgrimage that aimed to take him to Jerusalem by way of Montserrat, Manresa, and Barcelona. The pilgrimage did not end in Jerusalem and lasted all his life (ibid. 98-107).

In Manresa he lived the life of an excessively ascetic beggar and exposed himself to experiences of prayer, meditation, doubt, trouble, depression and calm elevation of his spirit that he interpreted as a process of learning the ways of God, led by God’s grace and love. In Manresa he started to carefully write down his experiences, ordered his notes in order to help lead others on their way to salvation and adhered to his practice of lived experiences, which he trusted more than his acquired theoretical knowledge. What later came to be known as the Spiritual Exercises (Loyola, Ignatius de. 1987. Ejercicios espirituales, introduced and annotated by Candido de Dalmases, S.I. Santander: Sal Terrae) developed from the notes he made in Manresa. Ignatius lovingly tries to provide the necessary external conditions for the exercitants’ path to social choices concerning their life in freedom and conscious experience of their interiority while respecting his deepest conviction that grace motivates and moves every individual. The rules, instructions on how to proceed in meditation and prayer and themes of contemplation of the Spiritual Exercises are meant to help and accompany exercitants on their path of social choices and the realization of a Christian life (Tellechea 1991. 132). Repeated encounters with the Inquisition convinced Ignatius of the need to be ordained a priest. Only as a priest would he have the chance to be officially recognized by the Catholic Church for his preaching and teaching about Christian faith and the Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius subsequently studied Latin and Theology in Barcelona and Paris and at the age of 43 finally obtained a Master’s degree in Theology. Seven years later, he succeeded in having the Pope in Rome recognize the Society of Jesus. On July 31, 1548, Pope Paul III approved the Spiritual Exercises in the bull Pastoralis officii (ibid. 336).

Leading up to the 400th anniversary of the death of Saint Ignatius, the great Catholic theologian Karl Rahner (1904-1984) prepared a series of articles on the Spiritual Exercises and their significance for the spiritual life of the contemporary Christian (Rahner, Karl. 1964. The Dynamic Element in the Church. London: Burns & Oates). Rahner expressed his surprise that Saint Ignatius received the Church’s legitimation for his Spiritual Exercises. Iganatius gives importance to the individual’s religious experience. Saint Ignatius repeatedly and expressively makes clear that the anticipated social choices of the exercitant “must be indifferent or good in themselves and furthermore must remain within the realm of the teaching and practice of our holy mother the hierarchical Church” (Rahner 1964. 101). Rahner cites above from the Spiritual Exercises number 170 and points to numbers 351, 353, 361 and 365, that again stress and repeat the same due obedience to the authority of the Catholic Church in matters of social choices of the individual (ibid.). It is quite clear that restriction of the possibility conditions of social choices to what the authorities of the Catholic Church allow does not agree with the validity condition for claims to the validity of social choices. In the sixteenth century, European societies were not familiar with the claim that all women, men, and queer possess equal dignity, freedom, liberty, and rights. Nevertheless, Spiritual Exercises explicitly addresses the possibility of preparing for and realizing social choices and in numbers 175 to 189 lays out procedures for the exercitant to proceed with the election of her or his choices. Saint Ignatius is aware of the emerging empowerment accorded by the individual’s freedom and encourages the exercitant to make use of her or his liberty (Spiritual Exercises n. 234). Rahner confirms that “there is general agreement that the nature of the Exercises is ultimately determined by the fact that a choice, a vital decision, is to be made in them” (Rahner 1964. 89). If there is a social choice, there must be liberty and freedom to decide on possible alternatives. Ignatius organizes the exercise of developing social choices in freedom and liberty within the setting of two speech-acts that constitute an integral part of the Spiritual Exercises. Both settings are described in Spiritual Exercises n. 15. One set of speech-acts concerns the communication between God and the exercitant. “During the Exercises the Creator and Lord himself (in contradistinction to mediation by human co-operation)” communicates “himself to the faithful soul” (Rahner 1964. 90). The exercitant feels embraced by God and empowered to love and praise. The experience of love disposes the exercitant to go her or his way (Spiritual Exercises n. 15). The second set of speech-acts is realized by the exercitant, who on every day of the Exercises meets and informs her or his spiritual director about his or her experiences during the Exercises. In the same number 15 Ignatius lays down the rule for the person who accompanies the Exercises: This person must impartially respect the fact that “the Creator works directly with his creature and the creature with its Creator and Lord” (Rahner 1964. 90). Rahner calls the person who leads others through the Exercises, as Ignatius writes, the spiritual director. The Jesuits also call this person the Master of the Exercises. From number 15 of the Spiritual Exercises, it is clear that the spiritual director does not direct or master the exercitant. The free communication with God within the exercitant must be respected. The exercitant decides freely to inform the director of her or his experiences. The person who accompanies the Exercises must listen and accompany them with empathy, offering advice for the next steps in the Exercises while observing strict and impartial neutrality concerning the social choices and possible alternatives the exercitant speaks of.

The authorities of the Catholic Church protect the speech-acts of the exercitant and the spiritual director in order to realize the dignity and freedom of the speaker. It is a great exception that the Church recognized and encouraged the practice of the Spiritual Exercises when at the same time the Inquisition conducted by the Catholic Church and the State institutionalized torture and killed Christians for freely expressing their thoughts on the Christian faith and their religious convictions. Ignatius successfully obtained the Church’s approval for an institution, the Spiritual Exercises, that permitted some personal liberty concerning faith. The individual setting of the Spiritual Exercises guaranteed the realization of the dignity of the exercitant and of the person who accompanies the Spiritual Exercises, at least within the limits of this setting.

In 1956 Karl Rahner defended his interpretation of Saint Ignatius’ “doctrine of individual guidance by the Holy Spirit and of individual ethics” (Rahner 1964. 10, 12). Rahner wants to present his contribution of a “practical theology of Christian life and the Church” as a “private interpretation” and not as systematic situational ethics. His fellow German Jesuit and professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome Franz Xaver Hürth used Saint Ignatius to ensure Church discipline. In Rome, it was especially important to demonstrate obedience to the Holy Office that had just officially condemned situational ethics (Rahner 1964. 12). What is this “grace-given experience of transcendence” (Rahner 1964. 156) all about that a few years before convening the Second Vatican Council to reform the Catholic Church and 400 years after Saint Ignatius still stirs a suspicion of individual Christian anarchy and ethical arbitrariness?

There is a first time for Election of a social choice (Spiritual Exercises n. 175) or “the First Mode of Election,” whereas in cases of “actual revelation” a “fundamental central experience of direct relation to God must be assumed to be present and of prime importance” (Rahner 1946. 159). There is a second time for Election (Spiritual Exercises n. 176) or the experience “of the Second Mode of Election” that works as a trial, “an experimenting at one’s own risk and peril, whether and how the central religious experience coheres with such and such limited, predicamental objects” that are such and such social choices (Rahner 1964. 159). The central religious experience, “the fundamental certitude that lies at the root of Ignatius’ logic of concrete particulars, by which he recognizes the will of God” (ibid. 156), consists of receiving “much light and knowledge through experiencing consolations and desolation and by the experience of discernment of various spirits (n. 176)” (ibid. 157).

If the first and second modes of Election are not available, a third mode of Election is employed (Spiritual Exercises n. 178). “The third mode, therefore, is not selected because a man is free to pick his method of Election at will, but because God authorizes him to use it by relegating him to that position” (Rahner 1964. 168). This third mode is practiced “at a time which the exercitant interprets as a “time of calm” (Spiritual Exercises n. 177). She or he makes the social choice with “serene, joyous and harmonious lucidity” disposing of her or his capabilities of freedom, liberty, intellect, will and memory, “so that he thinks he has found the right solution by pondering and calculating acutely and lucidly, pencil in hand, without being moved by any spirits at all” (Rahner 1964. 168-169). Since in number 333 of the Spiritual Exercises Ignatius regards “calm and quiet” also as signs of motion by the good spirit, Rahner suggests that in this third mode of Election “in actual fact the process of the second mode is occurring, but in a less explicit form” (ibid. 168). The second mode of Election is based on an experience of “consolation”, the third mode accepts that the “silence of God may itself be an answer, manifesting his will for the exercitant to remain in the darkness of uncertainty, of the provisional, of the unfinished experiment” (ibid.).

The Rules for the Discernment of Spirits permit the exercitant to know the will of God (ibid.). There is a consolation that comes from God, and only “this really fundamental and certainly divinely effected consolation” can be the starting point and the ultimate criterion on which the Election is built (ibid. 158). “Pure receptivity to God (as concretely achieved, not as a theoretical principle and proposition)” is the fundamental experience for discernment. Discernment means that the experience of “consolation” is frequently confronted with the possible social choices. Self-observation of the feeling that accompanies a single confrontation leads the way to a decision. The experiment consists of observing whether the consolation remains in harmony with a possible alternative. If the decision for a social choice “produces peace, tranquility, quiet, so that true gladness and spiritual joy ensue, that is, the joy of pure, free, undistorted transcendence,” the social choice is a good one. If instead of “smoothness, gentleness and sweetness, sharpness, tumult and disturbance arise (n. 329, nn.333 - 336)”, the social choice in question is recognized as a bad and false alternative (ibid.).

It is important to assess that in the experience of “the purely divine consolation” itself there is choice of thought or picture. There is no social choice present in the consciousness of the exercitant and the time of discernment that leads to the decision is a posteriori. The finding of congruence and coherence occurs “in this ‘time following’ (n. 336), the original consolation is still operating, still present, even if no longer in its pure form but overlaid by and combined with impulses” and the emotions accompanying the alternatives of social choices (ibid. 160). It is of primal importance that for Ignatius it is not the moral value of the social choice that determines good or bad, right, or wrong; it is the certainty of the individual who knows the origin of her or his consolation that determines the moral value of the social choice (ibid. 163).

The consolation without cause is the experience, the movement of the soul as Ignatius says, where “God himself as such is given (and nothing else),” it is an experience of “the love of God as God,” where one is wholly drawn to (ibid. 143). In number 330 of the Spiritual Exercises Ignatius describes the consolation without cause: A human being is “drawn totally into the love of his divine Majesty … without any previous sense or knowledge of any object, whereby any such consolation should come by (the soul’s) acts of understanding and will’ (ibid. 132). Rahner refers to Saint Bonaventure, who knew a quite similar mystical experience, “according to which here on earth there is an experience of the love of God, which occurs without the intellect having any share in it” (ibid. 134). This experience carries “with it an intrinsic certitude of its purely divine origin,” God’s presence is of an “irreducible self-evident self-sufficient character” (ibid.). The exercitant recognizes this “consolation without cause with certainty as divinely caused” (ibid. 144). Ignatius describes this experience as an existential experience. It is the theologian Rahner who wants to get the orthodox theological concepts right and tries to justify this experience of the whole existence-comforting consolation and embraces love and complete security as a concrete realization of “supernatural grace” directed toward “the beatific vision” (ibid.). This justification of an individual experience that is empty of any concepts or mental reflection with the help of theological concepts of Thomism shows the insecurity of Rahner and his fear to claim the dignity of the individual that is free to interpret his or her experiences. Over and over Rahner uses theoretical concepts like “positive affirmation and receptivity,” “love,” or “without mediation of concepts” in order to justify Ignatius’ speaking of “the consolation sin causa” (ibid. 146). This experience “concerns, by the very nature of the case, since freedom and love are involved, a concrete person in his innermost center, as unique, responsible and free … engaged with his freedom, individuality and history” (ibid. 148). Experiencing this transcendence of the present and coming God Rahner considers as “the condition of the possibility of all cognition” and therefore as “without error” and as “the ultimate certitude” (ibid. 149). I do not follow Rahner, who claims in the above sentence that a particular experience would serve as validity condition for the truth of a claim to universal or general validity concerning the origin of knowledge as a self-evident truth. The general cannot be reduced to the particular truth value true and cannot prove the truth of any individual particular experience. The individual experience stands for the individual person. There is no outside proof for the individual conscience, there is only respect for the individual. Rahner insists that the particular cannot be reduced to the general and must therefore be taken seriously and be respected as particular. Rahner is not ready, defending the equal dignity, freedom and rights of a particular woman, man and queer.

The consolation sin causa “consists of a ‘wordless’ experience: without any sound of words,” which wholly fills the mystic “with the inexpressible experience … in love of God, who is perceived as present, not merely thought of in concepts and simply signified intentionaliter by the concept that represents him” (ibid. 153). Again, Rahner defends this experience as emotion: “This actual concrete central experience is identical with a ‘perception’ or ‘sense’ (ibid. 154). He explicitly excludes the rational scholastic abstraction: “For theological reasons we must exclude an interpretation that would make this a visio beata immediata in the doctrinal sense” and that speaks of a “non-conceptual awareness of transcendence” that “is present to itself in consciousness” (ibid.).

Rahner makes clear that “the experimental test of consolation, namely confronting the particular matter with the utter openness towards God,” is the mode of Election according to Saint Ignatius that women, men and queer “could carry out in everyday life” (ibid. 156). Rahner is not an elitist, he supposes “that faithful who have never heard of Saint Ingatius’ instructions nevertheless instinctively make their religious decisions by their everyday religious logic” (ibid. 166-167). There is no need for a Christian to meditate days, weeks, or a month according to the method of Ignatius in order to make their social choices concerning their faith. We may also assume that as the experience of consolation carries its own evidence and certitude of its intrinsic divine origin and nature, women, men, and queer experience the presence of the divine mystery and secure comfort in their lives and give testimony of their experiences in their own words. The respect for the individual’s particular experience of the divine requires that we listen to these experiences with empathy and dignity. Ignatius as “holy teacher of the Christian view of life and of its practice” questions the Catholic Church’s understanding of the Christian existence (ibid. 170). Have we Christians already really accepted and understood that with regard to the particular social choices of our lives it is only from the subjective certitude and recognition of the experience of God’s love that “the question of its moral worth as being God’s will or not can be settled” (ibid. 118). It is not the “moral evaluation” of the social choice that determines its “moral goodness.” It is the “divine origin” of the experience of consolation that provides the criterion for the moral evaluation of a possible choice (ibid.).

“It is not the logic of a deductive ethics of general principles,” but “a logic of concrete individual knowledge” that recognizes that God addresses himself “to the individual as such” that guides the realization of our social choices with dignity, freedom, and equal rights. It is clear for Rahner, as for any Christian, that the concrete social choices are “in accord with the general principles of natural law, logic and the canons of faith” (ibid. 169).

Concerning the social realization of equal dignity, liberty, and rights, it is Rahner’s merit to have furnished for Catholic theology with the help of German philosophical idealism a way of thinking and speaking about the individual person and her liberty and freedom and convictions of Christian faith in the private sphere of the Spiritual Exercises. All his life Rahner had to show the compatibility of his theological respect for the individual person and her religious experiences and life with the medieval theology of Thomas Aquinas. Yet, Rahner did not embrace the claim of equal dignity, freedom and rights for all women, men, and queer, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) had proclaimed, for further reflection on the state of Human Rights within the Catholic Church.

The translator W. J. O’Hara presents the Catholic medieval term transcendence: the concept of transcendence coherently and chronically “designates the immanent, dynamic orientation of mind or spirit above and beyond itself in endless scope towards being in general and, ultimately, to God” (Rahner 1964. 125). This definition of transcendence has no idea or thinking of the social choice of the individual person and responsible subject. There is no question whether the individual subject actually wants to identify as a subject and actually agrees with her or his transcendental identity. The supposition of the general orientation towards the good and God represents the medieval world view of Thomas and fits the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. The traumatic experience of World War II shaped the personality of Karl Rahner. The experience of social and moral destruction of society by National Socialism, the life-threatening experience of the heavy bombardment of Vienna in 1945 and the constant angst of being killed at the last moment before the end of the war by some fanatical defenders of Hitler’s Reich drove the horrors of dictatorship and war home to Rahner. Many of his Jesuit and religious brothers, priests and bishops also started to question the legitimacy of the obedience that religious superiors and Church authorities simply requested of their inferiors without spiritual, moral, or rational arguments and legitimation. The understanding of a religious life practicing some personal responsibility, freedom of thinking and free acting within the limited setting of the autocratic Church structures developed in the first two decades after World War II.