Hello from the start of summer.
why theorize even at all?
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Hello, hello, how’s it going? It feels like it’s been a very long time since I’ve been in your inbox…
I finished my second semester of theology school last week, which is why I finally have a bit of mental space to send this little note. I wrote papers about knowing God’s trinitarian nature through the experience of friendship in the world and about the doctrine of Mary’s immaculate conception and why I choose to read this as reflecting her commitment to holiness rather than as some kind of anointed life in which she could never have sinned.
The first paper has some pretty significant precedent in Catholic theology while the second is technically probably heretical, at least since the 1200s. Both were fun to write, both were nice distractions from the way the world is right now, from the invasions we’re doing and the costs of those invasions, the deep, painful ones like people dying in Iran and Gaza as well as the simple, petty ones like how expensive it is now to visit my family in other states because of jet fuel prices.
Is it okay, or worthwhile even, to find distraction from the way the world is right now? What’s to be gained in writing a doctrinal analysis paper about the Trinity or a sinless Palestinian girl during a genocidal century?
We talk in class a lot about how and why theology should be rooted in life and meaningful for real people, but that can sort of ring hollow. I don’t think it has to ring hollow, but it sometimes does, at least enough that one of the students in my cohort has just decided to withdraw from the program to go work in some kind of human services role in San Salvador. He visited this spring for a service trip and I think found a lot more resonance with his motivations for enrolling in the program than he’d found in our readings on Karl Rahner or Lumen gentium.
It makes me think of Hannah Baer’s note in Trans Girl Suicide Museum about how being hurt or angry can cause us to write theory when really what we need is to feel our feelings and then learn to be okay with them or to share them or let them lead us to doing something in the world. She’s not exactly advocating for an anti-theory or an anti-academic stance, but she is pointing out a real thing that happens, especially in the humanities and, I think, especially in the fields that lean philosophical like theology. We have big emotional responses to any number of experiences and then instead of weeping or laughing we cite sources and construct arguments. So then, really, what do I get out of theology? How does theology help the queer kids I care about, the ones who motivate me to do anything?
In my more pragmatic moments, I see religion as simply a very useful technology that has been developed and used by various people through history to get other various people to accomplish things they could not or would not have accomplished without it. When I’m being both pragmatic and cynical, I might say that religion is inevitable, so let’s at least be intentional about how we “do” religion. When I’m pragmatic and not so cynical, I might say: and that’s the purpose, that’s the great perhaps, which is the Divine, the fact that anyone might tap into that faith which makes anything possible. This vivifying, inspiring quality of religion is the experiential core of why I orbit the religious Sun, because that swelling I’ve felt in my heart before seems too important.
What I’m really dancing around, the reason I’m doing theory/waxing poetic right now instead of feeling, isn’t even as grand as the imperialism that the US doing. It’s just about how bad it felt to hear this priest in my class talk about “animist heathens” and what they can gain by engaging with Marian devotions. And it’s funny in some ways that I feel so badly about that, because I’m probably not an animist heathen, as much as I might wish to be sometimes. I’m not an animist heathen and, in the way he is thinking, probably no one is. I’m close, in the sense that I read Teilhard and go like “wow, that rules,” but I don’t think I could actually worship a mountain, as much as I would be willing to go through the motions.
What I’m mad about and sad about is the experience of getting to know someone even extremely superficially, building what feels like a refined and clear vision of them, and then having that vision shattered. Look, I didn’t suspect this man had grown in any significant way over the course of the semester, or that he’d grown significantly toward my way of being at least, but I have had several moments of surprise and delight wherein he said something kind and open and welcoming, something that indicated he had respect for different ways people are in the world. These moments build until they become a refined, delicate, and rose colored lens which can be shattered oh so easily. Because of that, I’m a little sad.
So then theory becomes a place to write toward people like him, and people like me, and to feign a kind of objectivity that I think might really just be a kind of attempted politeness. Theory writing and academic writing can be a terms of engagement that let us talk about patriarchy’s harm without yelling at the man whose chosen title is “Father.” It lets that man talk to me about his love for the Mother of God and to tell me why he thinks she’s so important, and understand something about how and when he feels weak, what his vulnerability looks like. So, no, I don’t think the theory is irrelevant, because if nothing else it’s a language that makes sense to certain people, myself today and my younger self included. But I do also hope to increase my capacity to say the feeling that’s driving the theorizing when I can, because it’s a language that also makes sense to certain people and those people are people I don’t want to leave out of my life.
The simple rule of thumb is whether or not the theorizing brings you closer to other people then, I guess. I don’t think theory or ruminating is going to save the world, but I do think it has its place in the process, it can be something useful, a means of understanding each other. You just have to ask, is it a wall you’re hiding behind or bridge? Is it the start of a conversation or the last word? Do you do your theorizing alone in a dark room, or do you use it to shape those around you and to be shaped by their responses in turn?
Thanks for reading! I hope you’re having a nice spring season that rapidly is feeling like the beginning of summertime. If you’re in PA, don’t forget to vote in the primaries coming up on May 19th, and, if you’re in the 3rd Congressional District, don’t forget to vote for Chris Rabb for Congress.
Stay well --
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.