Faith Beyond Belief by Margaret Placentra Johnston

Grey: Usually reached sometime in adulthood.Conversely if you behave or believe properly, rewards come your way, such as eternal salvation in Heaven. This punishment could be external, like Hell or a beating from one’s parents, or internal, in the form of guilt or shame. Firm rules must be in place if you disagree with the rules or disobey them, you will be punished. At an age when everything in and regarding the world is black and white, good and bad, religion and/or spirituality follows the same pattern.

Black-and-white: During childhood, and sometimes into adolescence and beyond.

For the purpose of this discussion, the big shift is from a lower stage – let’s just call it “black-and-white” – to a higher stage – “grey.” This is VERY simplified, but it will do for this short blog post. Among the various theorists, there are also different numbers of stages and different names for the stages. Some people develop out of the timeline or in a different order, etc. There are almost always disagreements about stages of development of anything.

Thinking of this makes me think of the stages of spiritual development. It’s possible that the rules and regulations they rallied against are ones that, though valid, would not have been deal-breakers to someone more developed spiritually. Those whom I know that left Catholicism were never adults within that tradition they left as teenagers or before. (A dangerous thing to do, to be sure.) Have things changed in the Catholic church in the past 25 years? We know the focus shifts with every new Pope, and even within a single Pope’s tenure, so perhaps there really has been a change of focus from guilt to love in that time.Īnother potential answer is in the age or spiritual maturity level of the practitioner. I certainly could raise the question to more followers of this path or even just ask it directly I have not done so, and I’m only speaking from what I sense from them. In addition, for those who are currently practicing members of Roman Catholicism, shame does not seem to play into their religious value system. (I have only rarely met someone disenfranchised from another religion, but I’d be pleased to get that viewpoint as well.) Yet I’m speaking to them in the context of their current religious path, usually Unitarian Universalism, so the guilt or shame that came with one religion does not translate, for them, to all religious paths.

Certainly when I’ve spoken with friends who are disenfranchised from Catholicism, shame and guilt have played a big part of their decision. Is religion all about shame? This question was raised, in a round-about way, of course, on Facebook recently.

Faith Beyond Belief by Margaret Placentra Johnston