#271: Spirituality and/or Religion?

EXCERPT:More than one reader has asked me to write about "spirituality" and "religion." My first thought is that both terms come with baggage in tow. For me, "religion" generally means organized religion, and "spirituality" generally suggests spiritual journey. Right away we see the distinction: religion is something you belong to, while spirituality is something you live through. Religion is a visible entity outside you; spirituality is a personal reality within.

My second thought: this topic is the very hinge of a widening generation gap-- the largest since the 1960s. In short, the divide is between (mostly older) people who travel their spiritual journey via the path their religion guides them on, and those (mostly younger) people who prefer, for whatever reason, to find their own spiritual way unguided by any organization.

This oversimplifies, of course, since there are also people living without either conscious spirituality or religion, as well as people attached to religion as an end in itself, going through religion’s motions but oblivious to any inner spirit.

The last group poses a special problem, since their way of life reveals how religion can become an obstacle, rather than in aid, to spiritual living. Their rote religious practice can alienate others from religion, who observe them and judge that religion has become a hollow, empty affair. In extreme cases, observers (especially young, impressionable observers) may see hypocrisy at work when someone’s proclamations of faith do not match their practice, when they talk the talk (of organized religion) but do not walk the walk (of the spiritual journey), when they do not practice what they preach.

Need I say it? For 20th century American Catholics, the dominant dynamic between religion and spirituality -- perhaps the key factor in the generation gap I have noted -- is the perception of hypocrisy within our own Catholic clergy: first by those who preached love but practiced abuse, and second (but more grievously) by those Bishops who accepted their role as shepherd yet secretly loosed the wolves among their own flock.

The great fear is that this scandal has produced not only a single generation gap, but also a gap that will take many generations to heal. If large numbers of the Boomers’ grown children choose not to raise their own children as Catholics, our families and our church could suffer the loss for the foreseeable future.