The Mind, The Body, The Faith

I lack authority (or desire) to speak for all Catholics and, like many of my Protestant friends, the intense piety-driven Catholic is much more the exception than the rule. Why is this? The answer, I think, is related to the questions provided in my last installment’s commentary. What does an informed holism mean for material devotion? Or, as Steve puts it, what does

“a faith that exists outside the ‘heart and mind of the subjective self’ look like REALLY, because […] we [might not be] capable of achieving a faith of the body that doesn't originate in the mind [?]” Can we make “a distinction between parts of our consciousness that are almost inherently unquantifiable [?]”

Material devotion, as I see it, encompasses both body and mind. Here we should pause and recognize that “the brain” is not entirely synonymous with “the mind.” As has recently been pointed out to me, there is an infinite ontological gap between a thought and the electro-chemical brain state. While this is fodder for more classically-trained philosophers, suffice it to say that even the most secular beard-stroker acknowledges the “problem of the mind.” But while the two are separate beasts, no one denies that the brain and the mind are intricately bound. In fact, the brain state is seen as a direct mapping of the thought in a point-to-point correspondence.

Thus the brain, as bundle of neurons which map the thought-world, blurs the border between the mind/soul and the physiological. Steve is quite right to say that the “distinction between parts of our consciousness […] are almost inherently unquantifiable.” I do not wish to imply that faith does not have subjective component or that the internal state is unimportant. Indeed it is just that internal state which legitimizes our material actions. Without *personally* ascribing significance to the material action, it becomes hollow ritual and is not religiously or socially efficacious… or, to qualify the latter, it is socially efficacious but not in the best sense.

The problem with most Catholics is that the once-meaningful rituals have been emptied of significance to the extent that most of those catechized within the past few decades have only the loosest understanding of the faith. Catholicism has become merely a cultural marker-- an inherited state. We go through our motions and they bring us a sense of communal identity in much the same way that the unique gatherings and group-specific motions of a yoga group, a bowling league, or any other micro-culture might. All, or at least most, of the significance has been ascribed to the action and not to the purpose of that action. In other words, many Catholics have the material but fall short of the devotion.

What I wished to stress in my last post is that we have to be aware of the body’s influence on the mind… and thus the strict dualism of the past is now untenable.

By over stressing the internal state we fail to train our body—which can be seen as a neglect of the brain/mind.

By over stressing the external state we fail to influence the mind—apart from the (in this case) accidental conditioning of the mind that comes through the environmental stimuli.

The first case seems to be a primarily Protestant problem and the latter a primarily Catholic one. This is likely because the first group stresses a more individual-steered faith (which inherently tends to privilege the mind) and the latter group stresses obedience to authority (which inherently tends to privilege the body rituals and is not as concerned with individual “ownership” of faith). Neither state, of course, is ideal.

To return again to Steve, he asks if an informed holistic view of faith is “impossible apart from a faith tradition that stresses physical sacraments.” Strictly speaking I am not terribly concerned with a Protestant articulation of material devotion, believing as I do in the beauty and the validity of the Catholic sacramental metaphysic. It is however, interesting to think about.

The Protestant can, without incurring the wrath of his betters, admit that the body influences the brain/mind. The Protestant can likewise safely claim that the body and its actions constitute a necessary part of devotion-- back in my Protestant days, we stressed how works and grace are not mutually exclusive and that a faith without works is dead. The argument could likely be stretched to include not only the social gospel, Good Samaritan aspect but also the intrinsic psychological benefits of altruism. The imagined Protestant retort would be that private instances of material devotion are inferior to those which help others (paralleling, perhaps, the New Testament’s insistence on the use of charisms within the fellowship for the good of the whole rather than privately for personal edification). So the answer to Steve is a qualified yes—material devotion is possible outside of a sacramental view but only if it is validated through social utility.

In closing I will go on a bit of a tangent and remind us all that many of the Catholic sacraments are socially-minded and so it is not the Blessed Sacraments themselves that I am here discussing but the extension of the sacramental mindset into the realm of personal spiritual development.

The sacramental metaphysic tells me that I’m not only reaping the “natural” benefits of material devotion (the habituation of pious living, the social-chemical conditioning into receptivity, the curbing of appetites through consistent denial of sinful lusts), I am also reaping the supernatural benefits. Grace, we believe, is transferred through the physical (e.g., in the Eucharist) and supernatural support is given in recognition of our physical faith (e.g., in the Rosary prayers and other manifestations of personal devotion/adoration/meditation). Even these material devotions, however, lose efficacy if they are just rote recitation (though this is not the case with the actual sacraments whose efficacy is rooted in Christ Himself and not in the officiating priest). Do co-opt a phrase from mass culture, "you don’t have to be sacramental to believe in holism, but it sure helps."