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A Next Step for Catholic Theology
By John Carmody

"Catholicism will again have an exciting, frontier theology if it probes non-Christian religious experience. . . from the still point of its own mystical tradition. . . .The experiential highpoints in non-Christian religious traditions, if engaged, would pressure Catholic theology to review, renew, and perhaps reform its own symbols mediating between numinous experience and confessional doctrine."

SEVEN hundred years after the death of Aquinas, seventy years after the birth of Rahner and Lonergan, Roman Catholic theology faces an uncertain future. It has scholars gainfully employed, especially in biblical and historical studies. It has pockets of innovation, such as biomedical ethics. These are rather ecumenical areas, however. Precisely Catholic confessional areas, such as speculative or pastoral theology, are less certainly vital. Rahner and Lonergan have begotten disciples, but no discernible successors. "Roman" theology, despite Hans Küng, keeps most synods and dioceses tutioristic. Neither Catholic faith's praxis nor its understanding, then, seems bold, free, enthused about the future.

I come, however, not to describe but to opine. In my opinion, Catholicism will again have an exciting, frontier theology if it probes non-Christian religious experience and secularist liberation experience from the still point of its own mystical tradition. Currently, Catholic work in liberation theology is well under way (though it is not strongly geared to mysticism).¹ As it develops, both the political and feminist faces it now presents may turn in more mystagogic, precisely theological directions, because redemptive reason and love are always finally numinous, mysterious. Non-Christian religious experience is quickly and regularly mysterious, but few theologians have followed the lead of conternplatives like Thomas Merton and William Johnston to make it catalyze a fresh compounding of Catholic faith. The remainder of this article, then, is simply a brief argument that deep dia-

John Carmody is Professor of Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is a graduate of Boston College, Woodstock College, and Stanford University where be received his doctorate. He has published articles in Horizons, the Andover Newton Quarterly, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion.
¹ A notable exception is the writing of Daniel Berrigan.

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logue with non-Christian "theology" would enhance Roman Catholicism's own fides quaerens intellectum.

I

The majority of human beings today, and through history, have never had the circumstances for Christian faith .² In a world vastly extended by research and unified by the technology of communication and travel, Catholic theology now at least nudges against this fact.³ As in periods of the past, the fact stimulates speculation on the votum baptismi, the supernatural existential, anonymous Christianity. Unfortunately, however, it has as yet little engaged Catholic theologians in comparative study of the dynamics of non-Christian religious experience and symbolization. That is, listening to "theologians" of other religions has not redounded to taxonomical study of the precisely Christian forms of numinous experience, the precisely Christian moves from being in love with the Holy Mystery to its dogmatic symbolization (as Trinity, Grace, Incarnation).⁴ The general assumption has been that Christian dogmatic symbols are the directly adequate cipher of God.

Probably one cannot be a Catholic Christian-expressively, doctrinally-without holding Jesus to be a privileged, basically adequate cipher, presence, manifestation of God. I find this not to mean, however, that Jesus' being, teaching, divinity are incomparable with other religious figures. Further, the comparison of Jesus, and the creed he generated, with other founders, and their followers' convictions, beckons as a radical, absorbing, renewing enterprise. It beckons as a theological preoccupation that might return Catholicism to its sources, reset the centrality of its mystical experience, and cut through many false problems in its missiology. If so, it would indeed be a path of life, an index to a happier theological future.

But what might this enterprise entail, more specifically? More specifically, it might entail, for example, the serial comparison of the Buddha's enlightenment and Jesus' messianic initiation, the Buddha's nirvana and Jesus' resurrection, and "emptiness" (as an ideogrammatic explication of nirvana) with Trinity (a Christian ideogram for the ultimate source and intention of resurrection). Let us pursue at least the first member of this comparison.

²For historical suggestion on this point, see Mircea Eliade, "On Prehistoric Religions," History of Religions, 14 (1974), 140-147. For geographical suggestion, see Ismail Ragi al Faruqi and David E. Sopher, eds., Historical Atlas of the Religions of the World (New York: Macmillan, 1974), pp. xx-xxi et passim.
³ See, for example, Charles Davis, Christ and the World Religions (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971); Raymond Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1968); Heinz Robert Schlette, Towards a Theology of Religions (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966).
⁴ See Karl Rahner, "The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology," Theological Investigations, IV (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966), pp. 36-73.

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II

In a recent interpretation of Sakyamuni's enlightenment, Richard Robinson has tried to extricate the original experiences behind the now legendary accounts.⁵ According to Buddhist tradition, on a night of the full moon Sakyamuni ascended the four stages of trance (dhyana). First, he calmed his passions, detached his mind from sense objects, and discursively gazed at passing mental images. Next, he moved to non-discursive dhyana, characterized by "one-pointedness of mind, serene faith, zest, and ease."⁶ In the third trance, his zest gave way to dispassion, though he was mindful, conscious, and felt bodily bliss. Finally, in pure awareness and equanimity, he became free of such opposites as pleasure and pain, elation or depression.

Traditionally these trances are characterized by progressive concentration and cognition. Through the night of enlightenment, then, Sakyamuni supposedly came to know: (1) his own previous existences, (2) the dying and rebirth of living beings everywhere, and (3) the crucial truth that suffering ceases with the cessation of desire. By this directly perceptive knowledge, he became the Buddha, the supremely enlightened one.

In Robinson's interpretation, the first cognition (of one's previous lives) is a wide-spread shamanic power, by no means limited to Buddhists. Similarly, the second cognition (unobstructed cosmic vision: knowing the condition of all living beings) is also a widely-reported power of shamans and prophets. "The specifically Buddhist feature is correlating good deeds with happy births and bad deeds with miserable ones."⁷ In the third cognition, which begot the three marks and the four noble truths,⁸ Robinson finds an advance on shamanic achievements, a passage to the generalized, "philosophic" perception that separates higher civilizations from primitive ones.

By his direct realization of man's ethico-ontological structure, the Buddha claimed to solve the painful problem of transmigration. As he pondered his solution more fully, it emerged as a theory of causality in twelve stages. Working backwards, he found that: (1) aging and dying depend on birth, (2) birth depends on becoming, (3) becoming depends on appropriation, (4) appropriation depends on craving, (5) craving depends on feeling, (6) feeling depends on contact, (7) contact depends

⁵ See The Buddhist Religion (Belmont, California: Dickenson, 1970), pp. 13f.
⁶ Ibid., p. 18.
⁷ Ibid., p. 19.
⁸ The three marks of being are that it is transitory, painful, and self-less. The four noble truths are that life is painful, that pain is caused by desire, that the cessation of desire brings the cessation of pain, that the way to the cessation of desire is the eightfold path of right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. See S. Radhakrishnan and C. Moore, A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 272ff.

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on the six sense fields, (8) the six sense fields depend on narne-andform, (9) name-and-form depends on consciousness, (10) consciousness depends on the karmic residue of deeds, words, and thoughts, (11) karmic residue depends on ignorance of the four noble truths, and (12) ignorance is therefore the source of transmigration.⁹

The Buddha's enlightenment, then, was an experience directly ontological and consequently soteriological. By an insight into the being-structure of man's world, he shed the veils of ignorance that wrap one in samsara (karma, transmigration). At his death (parinirvana), he passed beyond samsara, into ineffable freedom. He was cured of an ill existence, saved for unconditioned fulfillment. "Nirvana" became the numinous ideogram for this state of ineffable success. When Mahayana (Madyamika) speculation probed the ontological implications of such dharma, it stressed the unconditionedness of nirvana, and its immanence to samsara. "Emptiness" (sunyata) became the key concept in this stress. What a westerner might call the "sovereignty of being" (esse) appears to have overwhelmed philosophers like Nagarjuna, scriptures like the Diamond and Heart. The conditions of being (essence) are empty (contingent), from the absolute viewpoint of isness (esse, existence). Absolutely, there is simply isness, before which all contingencies and dualistic oppositions fall away.¹⁰

At this point, it may be well to recall the hypothetical and instrumental nature of this exemplary comparison of Buddha and Jesus. Robinson's interpretation of Buddha's enlightenment, and my further ruminations, are both highly hypothetical. The historical materials are too vague to afford a sure reconstruction of what the Bo-tree shaded, and speculation about the cognitional side of enlightenment-nirvana soon forces one to the fierce business of critical epistemology. What one finally conjectures happened to a great seer usually depends on one's own ontology and faith-one's own chartings of heightened consciousness' ineluctable Mystery. My argument here is that these chartings are the stuff of creative theology. If Catholic theology were to confront the Buddha as a legitimate seer, it would have seriously to rechart its mystagogy. Then, comparative dialogue would be instrumental or maieutic for sub-dogmatic, fundamental the-ology. This would probably seldom come to full clarity, but tant mieux. The theology that best serves faith, I find, is more like unknowing than geometry.¹¹ In turning from Buddha's enlightenment to Jesus' messianic call, then, we need not apologize for mysteriousness. Progress will be better locating the Mystery, not removing it.

⁹ See Robinson, op. cit., pp. 20-22 for a fuller description.
¹⁰ See "Dogen on Being-Time," in Philip Kapleau, ed., The Three Pillars of Zen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), pp. 295-299.
¹¹ See Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), pp. 277-278.

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III

In Joachim Jeremias' careful study, Jesus experienced his call when he was baptized by John "in order to take his place among the eschatological people of God that the Baptist was assembling."¹² As the major texts (Mk. 1:9-11; Mt. 3:13-17; Lk. 3:21ff.; Jn. 1:32-34) agree, there were two basic ingredients to the baptismal theophany, the descent of the spirit and an associated proclamation. Circumstantially, Jesus probably baptized himself, in a collective rather than a private setting, with John as witness rather than agent. Substantially, the first marvelous effect or concomitant of this baptism was that the spirit of God descended on Jesus, with a gentle sound like a dove. For the Judaism of the time, the imparting of the spirit usually meant prophetic inspiration. In part, then, Jesus is being portrayed as called to be God's messenger. The difference between Jesus' call and that of the classical prophets is that since them the spirit had been quenched. In having it dramatically return, from the opened heavens, the evangelists seem to signify the dawn of the eschatological time of salvation.

The proclamation accompanying the spirit's descent (variously attributed to a heavenly voice, the spirit, or the Baptist), initially reflects Ps. 2:7 "You are my Son (today I have begotten you)." But the more important part, for Jeremias, is "on thee my favor rests." Behind this lies Isaiah 42:1.¹³ And if Isaiah be stressed more than Psalm 2, the proclamation intends not so much Jesus' sonship as his being the locus of God's spirit. In other words, Jesus' baptism should be set in the context of scriptural statements about the servant of God. From the time of his baptism, Jesus would have known that he was in the grasp of the spirit-that he was called to be the messenger and inaugurator of the time of salvation. And Mk. 11:27-33 suggests that Jesus did conceive his authority to rest on what happened at his baptism before John."¹⁴

Further, Jesus' conception of his mission and authority developed in terms of a revelation. What the baptismal event adumbrates or symbolizes is a rather intrinsic authority: "His Father has granted him the revelation of himself as completely as only a father can disclose himself to his son. Therefore only Jesus can pass on to others the real knowledge of God."¹⁵ From this point, Jeremias repeats his well-known arguments for the uniqueness and great significance of Jesus' regularly addressing God as "Abba." This need not mean that Jesus himself thought of his mission in terms of a "Son of God" Christology (that is, in terms of pre-existence). It does imply that Jesus dealt with God in the confidence, security, reverence, and obedience of a child.

¹² New Testament Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 197 1), p. 49.
¹³ For Jeremias' argument for the primacy of Isa. 42:1ff., see pp. 53-55.
¹⁴ Ibid., pp, 56ff.
¹⁵ Ibid., p. 61.

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Jesus' "enlightenment," then, likely had the modality of a filial vocation, a "divine" son receiving a nurninous "Father's" commission. The commission was to inaugurate the eschatological era (the time of the spirit's return, the time of God's basileia). The "temptations" consequent to the baptism may be seen as Jesus' "yes" to this vocation. In Mark's version (1:12ff.), which appears to be the earliest, Jesus' experience is rather obscure, and the language is strongly symbolic. First, the spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness (the place of evil spirits, and the Messiah's place of origin), where he was tempted by Satan for forty days. Second, Jesus was "with the wild beasts"-a theme from the idea of paradise. Third, another paradisial notion: the angels did Jesus table-service. Symbolically, then, the Markan account says that after his baptism Jesus conquered Satan and restored paradisial communion with nature and God. At his call and answer, the power of the basileia began driving revolutionary engines.

The Matthean/Lukan version of the temptations may supply this symbolic message with some history.¹⁶ Jeremias suggests that the core of the wilderness-temple-mountain triad of temptations is Jesus' possible emergence as a political messiah. Jesus is correlated, in temptation, with Moses and the miracle of manna, with all who serve "the prince of this world" or seek public support by marvelous displays of power. Since political messiahship was a more burning issue in Jesus' lifetime than in the early church, the temptation accounts are likely pre-Easter in provenance. This connects, in fact, with Jesus' rather regular indication to his disciples that he was in an ongoing struggle with Satan (for example, Mk. 8:33), and it makes sense of several times when Jesus claimed a victory over Satan that preceded his kerygmatic activity (cf. Mk. 3:27; Lk. 11:2ff.). For instance, to his opponents' charge that he drove out demons with Satan's help, he effectively replied, "Not so-by my conquest of Satan I control his possessions."

Since Pauline Christology made Jesus conqueror of Satan by virtue of his death-resurrection (cƒ. I Cor. 15:24; Col. 2:15; Eph. 1:20ff.), this synoptic material refers to a different tradition. Its likeliest reference is to the historical, though perhaps largely internal, experiences Jesus had at the beginnings of his mission. Finally, the two Lukan logia which speak of a vision of Satan have been handed down as sayings of Jesus in the first person (cƒ. Lk. 10:18 and 22:31ff.). It may be, then, that Jesus frequently spoke to the disciples about his early conquest of Satan, because of their persistent temptation toward a political conception of his messiahship.

"Temptation," of course, is a somewhat misleading translation of the New Testament word peirasmos. Normally, it means "trial," "testing," "ordeal," rather than seduction toward sin. The accounts of Jesus' time in the desert, after his baptism, are therefore not bits of

¹⁶ Mt. 4:1-1 1, Lk. 4:1-13.

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moralizing. "The Jesus who confronts us is not the one who has been tempted, but the one who has emerged from his ordeal."¹⁷ Like Abraham and Job, Jesus was tested to see whether he would follow the hard road pointed out at his baptism. Could he be God's servant, who "will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench" (cƒ. Isa. 42:1ff.)? Could he take on all the suffering purity in Isaiah's further sketches of the Ebed (for example, 52:13-53:12), making the law of the cross both declaration and constitution of the eschatological kingdom?"¹⁸ In the widest reading of Jesus' ordeal, he gave in the desert a word that was the germ of his death and resurrection.

IV

As the Buddha grasped at the psychology of pain and ignorance, so Jesus grasped at the psychology of sin and love. In both enlightenments, or calls, numinous ultimacy imposed itself. Can we, today, agree that a common human consciousness, and a common presence of numinous ultimacy, make them and us three partners to useful religious or theological investigation? Enlightenment and messianic vocation, like nirvana and death-resurrection, symbolize happenings in human consciousness. They say crucial things about our constitution and Mystery. If we are not to be made pseudo-species by our religion,¹⁹ we had best test the dialectic and complementarity of these crucial sayings, in their common human rootage. In a word, the bodhi experience calls Christians to look for the karma-breaking, nirvana-inducing equivalents in Jesus' religious experience, while, dialectically, Jesus' initiation-experience challenges Buddhist psychology of apatheia.

If Jesus experienced his call as the descent of God's spirit, the dawn of a new age in his own person, is it not likely that he felt something like release from the boundedness of man's "flesh" (sarx)? Supposing that God is heuristically known by transcendental intentionality,²⁰ the "Kingdom of God" ought to include the freedom of an unrestricted being-in-love. What is karmic in love is, arguably, its restriction. Those who really set their hearts on God, love all that they love at least implicitly in the Cloud,²¹ would seem to cut below the sort of restraining attachment that "karma" signifies. Granting that many Indian treatments smack of physicalism (reminiscent of the Baltimore Catechism's milk bottleology of sin), karma need not be overly

¹⁷ Jeremias, op. cit., p. 74.
¹⁸ John Carmody, "The Biblical Foundation and Conclusion of Lonergan's De Verbo Incarnato," Andover Newton Quarterly, 15 (1974), 130ff.
¹⁹ Erik H. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: Norton, 1968), pp. 298-299.
²⁰ Lonergan, op. cit., pp. 101-124.
²¹ William Johnston, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing (Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1973).

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physicalized. In fact, abidharma theory appears to locate it, ontologically, in something like a Whiteheadean field of prehensions.²² It might not be unacceptable to Buddhists, then, to speak about Jesus' moving into enlightenment's unconditionedness by a direct relation to a paternal ultimate-which relation drew his psycho-somatic unity, his "personality,"²³ away from any attachments to conditioned things as such (apart from God).

Perhaps, then, Jesus experienced in his call something like the cessation of (inordinate) desire, much of which the "temptation" accounts focus on political messiahship. This does not mean that the modality of Jesus' experience was directly ontological, like the Buddha's, nor that personalist, quite un-apathetic relation to God doesn't leap forward in the gospel accounts. It does suggest that, as a minor theme of a complex psychic orchestration, Jesus may have felt bathed in a light of freedom because the heavens-the realm of unconditionedness-opened and centered him in numinous nothingness.

The Buddha's bodhi-experience made him a teacher, if not a messiah, a doctor of spiritual sickness, if not a ransom for many. Might there not be in his calm sense of mission, in his embodiment of dharma, analogues to election in a filial (and "logical") mode? To be unmoved because of vision is not identical with fidelity because of filial agape. Still, a holistic appreciation of Buddha's personality could suspect that his world became congenial, in enlightenment, in ways suggestive of childlike trust. Granting that religion correlates with basic trust in a more maternal than paternal modality,²⁴ the cultural differences of Sakyamuni's and Jesus' people might allow for a meeting at "parental." As a minor theme, below or around the major impersonal theme, Buddha's enlightenment may have played in "Abba"-like tones.

Similarly, Buddha's combat with Mara is not identical with Jesus' combat with Satan, but they could share a reliance on parental ultimacy. It is bard to equate Buddha's dispassion with Jesus' redemptive suffering-unless one makes Buddha's pre-enlightenment asceticism rather central. However, there may be equivalents in what resurrection displays of the pacific Lord who has passed beyond sinful history (samsara). Finally, if the Bodhisattva vow to save all living things bears Buddha's imprint, his cool self-possession may not be wholly disparate from Jesus' altruistic soteriology.

Perhaps, then, the two great founders are indeed not incomparable. At least, it seems well to try to imagine one's way into their possible centers- if only because it focuses theology as a reflection on religion

²² Edward Conze, Buddhist Thought in India (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), pp. 56-79; 92-106.
²³ I bracket here both the Christian and the Buddhist special difficulties with this term, noting only the Christian conviction in Jesus' full humanity and the Buddhist position of the Pudgalavadins.
²⁴ Erik Erikson, Gandhi's Truth (New York: Norton, 1969), 401ff.; and Identify: Youth and Crisis, p. 106.

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(which centers in ultimate Mystery). And, the experience behind covenant, Exodic redemption, taoist harmony, Hindu moksha breaking karmic bonds, prophecy at the supposedly nonpareil level of the Rasul-all of these primordial religious centers invite similar comparison with Christian nuclear experience.

Little imagination is needed to generate analogous dialectics between shamanic ecstasy, bhakti yoga, kensho and their Christian counterparts (visions, devotions, infused contemplation). These comparisons stress the experiences that generate and maintain non-Christian religions. Such religions' theories about the psychic, and transhuman, forces working in their peak religious experiences could also be analyzed profitably. How, for instance, does the Tungus' thought-world specify their shamans' magical flight? Is it illuminating for the way Ignatian ecclesiology shapes discernment of spirits in the Spiritual Exercises? Is it possible that both relations pale in significance, because an agreement on the fruits of the flight or the spirit locates the center of both complexes below their predicamental language?²⁵

V

I am arguing, then, that the experiential highpoints in non-Christian religious traditions, if engaged, would pressure Catholic theology to review, renew, and perhaps reform its own symbols mediating between nurninous experience and confessional doctrine. There are several implications to this argument, however, and they themselves postulate future Roman Catholic debate. For instance, implicit in the serious, comparative study of non-Christian religious experience is a high estimate of its godliness. Roman Catholicism made this estimate, in Vatican II's Decree on Non-Christian Religions, but its average theology has not appropriated Vatican II on this point. In fact, such theology appears sandwiched by threats behind and ahead. Behind, the specters of the surnaturel controversy and Humani Generis haunt long Roman minds. Ahead, vigorous waves of fundamentalism, stirred by both Protestant proselytizers and Catholic charismatics, threaten irenic sailing below doctrines to their experiential sources. One needs steady nerves for such sailing, and the tiller-hand of Catholic power today is shaky. Unless the godliness of non-Christian religions is strongly presented, therefore, salvation outside the church will be granted only grudingly, confusedly.

A further implication of comparative theological study is that one justify the harrowing it may cause. I attempt such a justification, with reasons that will appear, but more fearfully than perhaps will be supposed. For, I suspect that genuine "theologians" know a dread in Entmythologisierung that makes "harrowing" an uniflated adjective

²⁵ Mircea Eliade, Shamanism (Bollingen/Princeton University Press, 1972), passim (p. 607: "Tungus"); Karl Rahner, The Dynamic Element in the Church (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964), pp. 84ff.

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for some reaches of comparative theology. "Theologian" is a more honorific title than I claim, so my appreciation of such dread is suspicious rather than fully tried. Nonetheless, it is sober.

In my view, theologians devote their lives to mapping the infinite. They walk the tiny wire of communal anamnesis, the thin strand of paradigmatic symbols, across abysmal nothingness. For they are no genuine logicians of the divine if they have not fallen into the hands of the living God, and so known terror. It is terrifying to confront the Aujklärung that all symbolization of reality is man-made. It is delicate indeed to stop this terror, with the corks of finitude and communality, and not make a Volksreligion. As Wittgenstein and Weil witness, intellectual honesty in matters "theological" is quite exactly harrowing. The ground of mental spirit is hard to break gently. The sweet earth of Mystery, of the Deus semper major, is amazing grace for intellectuals, too. Therefore, to enter comparative religious analysis, with Catholic faith, is to venture a dark, tumultuous night. Whether it will contain a living flame of love, beget a spiritual canticle of joy, is uncertain. It may make us strangers to the people one once thought chosen.

Catholic leaders are not usually theologians or intellectuals, so their perceptions of the dangers in honest dialogue, with non-Christians gifted by God, are not precisely those above. On the other hand, they are not completely different. Tepidity and confusion in popular Catholic faith, among the "simple faithful," are analogues to intellectual agnosticism. The better portion of pastors' fear, then, is born of pity for the pain their flocks suffer in a pluralistic world. Life is more ardent, personalities are generally more pointed, when God is personal, sins are simple, heaven wipes every tear. The bland, round forms of sophisticates' lives, intellectuals' land of the "interesting," are poor compensation for purity of heart that wills one thing. Church leaders are mistaken when they assume such purity thinks one thing, but their mistake is pardonable. For all that Vincent of Lerin is an anachronism, since man has somewhat come of age, his memory can evoke the best kind of theological nostalgia. John 17:21ff. is a perennial heuristic of the hope, the heaven, without which our wish shrinks to our grasp.

VI

So much, then, for an accord with those who sense dangers in highly estimating, seriously engaging with, non-Christian religious experience. What advantages might overbalance these dangers sufficiently to weigh out a deposit on "life"? First, the seriousness of the enterprise. I find nothing more serious, theologically, than being in love with God, the holy Mystery, and making this love maieutic for faith ("the knowledge born of religious love").²⁶ As Kierkegaard in

²⁶ Lonergan, op. cit., p. 115.

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sisted, faith is supremely passionate. Its ardor and suffering make the theolgian's path a via crucis. But, as Thomas ä Kernpis equally insisted, this way of the cross is royal. Tasting compunction will illumine its definition.

Engaging with people of whatever religious tradition who are in love with the holy Mystery, who fashion their religious definitions from compunction, is engaging in the most serious, nuclear theology. It is doing the res religiosa, which all theologians say is the res humana. It is marshaling courage to be-in this case to be before others as one whose passion for God is formed by the catholic Christ. Such being will probably be sundering. It will probably shatter a dozen mirrors of self-deception, that one does love the Lord first, with all his or her mind and heart and soul and strength; that this love is categorically shaped by the catholic Christ of Nicea, Chalcedon, Ephesus. From the fragments, however, one may assemble a better and more questioning honesty. Who or what is this Lord, my God? How stands the God of the twelve, let alone the God of the Vatican Councils, with him (compared, say, to the Brahman nirguna and saguna)? What is the actual, as probably distinct from the borrowed official, analogy of being presently making him reasonable? What Catholic correlative to samadhi mediates between the Christian apophatic and kataphatic theologies? How does one become contemporary with Jesus today and experience that karma is at best penultimate, that creative atonement is a deeper potential in time? Where, indeed, is the personal, historically faced numen actualizing this potential? Or does Jesus really contradict Hotspur, really make life not maya, not time's fool?

These are all serious questions, which few of us can long bear. In the measure that we are honest, however, some such questions barbicand our way to wisdom. A second advantage of engaging the serious wise men of non-Christian religions, then, is that in so doing we exercise honesty. Today athletes of the Christian spirit grow lazy, and probably untruthful, if they attend only a western gymnasium. I would hope that my tradition, Roman Catholicism, might send more of its scholars beyond the gymnasium, to the university of world religions. Studying there, they would be drawn, perhaps even forced, to a seriousness and honesty, a depth and simplicity, now not regular. This would be hard, but exciting. It might make Roman Catholicism more respectful of the Deus semper major its mystics have hymned, and more concerned about a humbler role in a bigger religious world. Thereby, in my view, it would quite enhance Roman Catholicism's theological future.