future – Houghton STAR

Last semester, while sitting in the lobby of the chapel, waiting to pass out Friday papers, the inner doors opened for a moment, and I heard the speaker speak the words made famous by Confucius: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” And my immediate reaction, before I could stop myself, was “no.” No, that’s not right at all. It can’t possibly be that simple, no, why would you say something like that? Is that supposed to assuage the rumpled soul of a soon-to-graduate-student like myself, reassure me that the past four years of my life have not been spent for naught? Is it a guarantee that I will somehow be successful and content in the future if I can just pick the right path, even when stories and statistics tell me otherwise? My questions amounted quickly, my indignation rising. However, recognizing the futility of getting worked up over words that I had heard only indirectly, and out of context, I tried not to let them get to me. Chapel ended soon thereafter, and my afternoon followed in an orderly fashion, according to routine.

Despite my best efforts to forget them, though, those words followed me for the rest of the day, and have been rolling around in the back of my mind since I first heard them months ago. My gut reaction to them is still the same as it was then, a determinedly firm “no,” but after mulling over, I think I can now better articulate why. As I have lived in different places and gotten to know many different people, a consistency has been that I am drawn to those who live life passionately. You know the type. The person who, for one reason or another, is filled with that near-inexplicable…thing. An unquenchable zeal, it would seem, for whatever it is that they love: a language, a theory, a field, an era, a medium, a people group. Of the people like this whom I have had the privilege to know, with their diverse dreams, desires, and domains, the commonality they all share is that they work. Hard. Their expertise or abilities are not the gifts of random chance. The love they have for what they do has been and continues to be the result of time and effort.

Which brings up a concept that came to me of my ruminations: in the lives of people I greatly admire, the love of their field or craft has been honed. They did not stumble, one day, upon an already-formed passion of unique and exquisite construction and go “Ah-ha, now I know what to do for the rest of my life,” get a job in that field, and then let nature take its course. The love each of these individuals brings to their work is attractive to me because it has been acquired and shaped gradually through, yep, work. For me, this creates a picture of the love for your job and the concept of work as being inextricably linked, one influencing the other in a continual, beautiful repetition. The work fuels the love, and vice versa. It is a never-ending cycle, or at least it is in its ideal form.

As I continued conceptualizing my rebuttal to Confucius’ long-esteemed words, I came across another problem: the use of the word “job”. Clearly, cultural and linguistic context are integral in understanding a statement such as this one, so I will refrain from criticizing Confucius himself, since I admit that I don’t really know what he hoped to communicate when he uttered the original version. The way the word “job” is interpreted in my context, however, still causes me to trip up here. I am a senior, and the closer I have drawn to the end of my time here, the more I have found myself confronted with queries about my next steps, my plans for the future. My answers to these questions, or lack thereof, often sound hollow, even to my own ears. I haven’t been able to select just one potential career, narrow down my options to just one path upon which to embark, choose that one job that I love because, frankly, I love too many things. There’s some overlap, sure, but the diversity of the things I have invested myself in makes it overwhelmingly difficult to pick among them. The way I have heard Confucius interpreted tells me that my uncertainty dooms me to drudgery; until I finally discover what I love, choose that job, and my life eases accordingly, but I disagree. I think the order of events is wrong, and I don’t believe that a ‘job’ should be my all-consuming goal in life. There’s so much else to live for.

So where does that leave me, at the end of my mulling-over these old words? It leaves me with the conviction that my focus in life should be in honing my passions, in developing my varied loves through work (since the latter is simply inevitable), and in seeing where these things take me. I desire to see my life amount to so much more than a job, even one that I love. Maybe not having a plan etched in stone will turn out alright in the end. Maybe it won’t. For now, I’ll keep working.

Future of Catholicism After Benedict XVI and John Paul II

In a country where Protestant Christianity stands as the dominant religion and Roman Catholicism often seems to be at a disjoint with the operations of Rome, it can be easy to underestimate the significance of this past week’s events. On Ash Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI said his last mass as the Church’s leader, and became the first Pope to resign in nearly 600 years, the last being Pope Gregory the XII in 1415. I admit that I myself (even as a Roman Catholic) didn’t fully realize the importance of this event until after thinking about it more closely. However, I believe that the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI creates an interesting situation for the future of the Catholic Church, in which the Church will either continue on its liberalizing path, or attempt to recover some of its lost traditionalism.

This is an interesting time in Catholic history. It is not hard to forget that just over 50 years ago the Catholic Church went through radical liturgical and theological changes that defined Roman Catholicism as we so know it today. These changes took place at the Second Vatican Council, the Church’s 21st ecumenical council. Among the most visible changes that the council made was a shift from a universal Latin liturgy to a liturgy that may be spoken in the vernacular of the particular congregation.

The change from a universal Latin Mass seems like a commonsensical move, I mean, doesn’t it make sense to hear a church service in your own language? But to Roman Catholics, this was a huge change, and it is difficult from our present-day perspective to appreciate just how radical it was. The Latin Mass has traditional roots that stretch back as early as the year 250 A.D and since the 16th Century it had been the official language of Catholic services worldwide. For Catholic theologians this was an important aspect of the Church’s practice, as it fostered unity not only with congregations worldwide, but also with the congregations across the historical spectrum. Unity of the believing body of Christ is among the irreducible goods for the Catholic, and the Latin Mass was among the most important tools for transcending cultural boundaries that may inhibit such unity.

However, Vatican II changed the liturgical framework, along with other things, in order to

better accommodate the Catholic Church to the modern world. But many believed that these decisions were compromising the Church’s distinctiveness and encouraging a liberally minded acceptance of wavering ideologies. At what point ought the Church attempt to accommodate for the increasingly pluralistic and scientific age, and when should the Church make the world accommodate to itself? This is a theologically difficult question, and to some, the Second Vatican Council made it loud and clear that the Catholic Church was ready to transgress its traditionally substantiated practices in order to meet the needs of the modern worldview.

But what does any of this have to do with the recent Pope’s resignation? Well, though Pope Benedict XVI has been labeled as a conservative, many forget that he, then known as Joseph Ratzinger, was one of the young theologians pushing for the Vatican II changes. Appearing at each of the Vatican II meetings in a business suit, young Ratzinger, along with Karol Wojtyla, (who would become Pope John Paul II) defended the belief that the Church needed serious changes if it were to remain effective in the changing world. Thus, Benedict XVI stands as one of the last active original members of the Second Vatican Council, and among the last of the original advocates of its general trajectory.

Therefore, the last two popes each had a personal investment in the post-Vatican II Catholic mission: which, generally put, is to seek ways in which the Church can change in order to improve its influence upon the world. Many traditionalists believe that this is almost entirely opposite to the Catholic Church’s mission, which they deem to be maintaining a historical and theological bridge between believers today and the apostle Peter, claimed to be the first pope of the Catholic Church. So, with Benedict XVI leaving his position as the leader of 1.2 billion believers, in what direction will the next pope lead the Church? Traditionalists may claim that now that a main advocate of Vatican II has exited the papacy, it is now time for a pope to attempt to re-emphaisize the Church’s traditional distinctiveness, as opposed to liberalism. Yet, others believe that the next pope may continue Vatican II’s liberalizing trajectory, perhaps enacting changes such as the ordination of women to the priesthood and a progression of LGBT rights. The papacy, leaving behind one of the original advocates of Vatican II, is at a crossroads. The cardinals hope to have elected a pope by Easter, which puts a deadline on the Catholic Church’s decision-making. Regardless of the direction in which this largest body of Christian believers goes, the Catholic Church’s next steps will have immense ramifications for the ongoing dialogue between the secular world and the Christian tradition.