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Ten Spiritual
Challenges of Our Age
Several years ago, the superior of the Missionary
Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Rome asked Fr. Ronald Rolheiser to
compile a list of the major spiritual questions bubbling in the
Catholic world, based on his experience as a writer and speaker.
In April 2010, Rolheiser updated the list at the request of the
National Catholic Reporter.
This is the updated list:
1. Atheism
The struggle with the atheism of our everyday consciousness,
i.e., the struggle to have a vital sense of God within
secularity, which, for good and for bad, is the most powerful
narcotic ever perpetrated on this planet; to be a mystic rather
than an unbeliever.
2. Polarization
The struggle to live in torn, divided and highly polarized
communities, as wounded persons ourselves, and carry that
tension without resentment, to be healers and peacemakers rather
than simply responding in kind.
3. Ideologies
The struggle to live, love and forgive beyond the infectious
ideologies that we daily inhale, i.e., the struggle for true
sincerity, to genuinely know and follow our own hearts and minds
beyond what is prescribed to us by the right and the left, to be
neither liberal nor conservative but rather men and women of
true compassion.
4. Sexuality
The struggle to carry our sexuality without frigidity and
without irresponsibility, i.e., the struggle for a healthy
sexuality, to be both chaste and passionate.
5. Interiority and Prayer
The struggle for interiority and prayer inside of a culture that
constitutes a virtual conspiracy against depth and serenity --
to keep our eyes set against an infinite horizon.
6. Restlessness
The struggle to cope with personal grandiosity, ambition and
pathological restlessness, inside of a culture that daily
over-stimulates them -- to live inside the torment of the
insufficiency of everything attainable and to accept that in
this life there is no finished symphony.
7. Paranoia
The struggle to not be motivated by paranoia, fear, narrowness
and over-protectionism in the face of terrorism and overpowering
complexity, to not let the need for clarity and security trump
compassion and truth.
8. Loneliness
The struggle with moral loneliness inside a religious, cultural,
political and moral diaspora, to find a soul mate who sleeps
with us at our deepest level.
9. Justice
The struggle to link faith to justice, ecology, and gender -- to
get a letter of reference from the poor.
10. Community and Church
The struggle for community and church, the struggle to find the
healthy line between individuality and community, spirituality
and ecclesiology, to be both mature and committed, spiritual and
ecclesial.
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Posted 05.25.10
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