In Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict XVI’s) book, Introduction to Christianity, written in 1968, he pointedly asks an important question that has stuck with me this year. Even though 1968 was 56 years ago, his question seems even more relevant today.
“What is the meaning and significance of the Christian profession, ‘I believe’ today, in the context of our present attitude to reality as a whole?” (Ratzinger, 47).
This question seems timely for our society today, and it encompasses a framework I think about as a Catholic in the 2020’s. I live in a saturated world filled with curated algorithms, comment boxes, and short-form video—a world so vastly different than my childhood not too long ago in the 1990s and early 2000s. I also live in a world where deconstructing faith and religion seem to be the norm. I’m not oblivious enough to not know that I’m a bit of an anomaly, a Catholic convert who attempts to practice their faith in the 21st century in an old traditional religion.
Oh, I also live in the Bible Belt where our Catholic diocese is so small that it’s considered a mission diocese. How did I end up in this spot? It’s a grand mystery for sure, but I’ll say that I’m partly where I am today due to contemplation, a practice that allows us to think long and deeply about life and what we do. Creativity brought me to this spot. Allowing myself space to create art allows me to move into the deeper spaces and contemplate what is true and what is false in the world. I think deeply in the same way people think deeply about deconstructing their religious experiences. It’s not bad to contemplate why you believe what you do, whether you currently believe or not. The point is to be honest with yourself and open your heart to what could be. It is not about what originates from inside, but from how you respond and ruminate over external messages:
“It becomes evident that belief is not the result of lonely meditation in which the ‘I,’ freed from all ties and reflecting alone on the truth, thinks something out of itself; on the contrary, it is the result of a dialogue, the expression of a hearing, receiving, and answering that guides man through the changes of ‘I’ and ‘you’ to the ‘we’ of those who all believe in the same way” (Ratzinger, 90).
I’m viewing all of this the lens of my Catholic faith, which was not an easy decision when I was first introduced to the religion. It’s not like God struck me with a stained glass window and I suddenly believed everything all at once. It was a gradual introduction into specific concepts that I had to slowly open my heart to. That’s the key to all of this. How do I open my heart? Discernment is all about deep reflection and judgments of the heart.
So going back to Ratzinger’s question: what does it mean for me to say, “I believe” in 2024? This blog will explore this question. This blog is a reflection of my theodrama, a term coined by Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. The theodrama is a metaphor that pictures God as a playwright and we as actors in his grand story. This blog is a reflection of my little scenes in his grand story. I will post fortnight (bi-weekly) reflections about discernment, my creative musings, and how the daily vocation of an artist and writer tries to unravel the mystery of belief in the 21st century. You can anticipate posts about philosophy, theology, and the random creative tangents I have. One week may be about fountain pen inks, and another may be about photography and typewriters. But all these reflections play a part in my little role in this grand scheme.