Between the mundane chores of weekend washing and shopping, there were some challenging conversations and experiences during my recent Holy Saturday. I had the pleasure of a morning catch-up over coffee with a friend of many years, Anne, who brought her few months old daughter Madeline. Anne grew up in a traditional Maltese Catholic culture, which she remembered as being communally and religiously nurturing in a way that she now hoped might be the experience of her children. I acknowledged that my youth, too, had been comfortable in a traditional Catholic parish. We both, of course, grew up in a Catholic world that James Fowler has described as being in a “stage three of faith”: we lived, as Catholics, tribally and exclusively; meaning was defined for us, and we accepted the formulae without question. This was a pre-critical and cultural faith adopted from outside. It was appropriate for that time. But today, as James Fowler has pointed out, ours and other religious traditions are struggling into a “stage four of faith”: while we still have a felt need for community, critical reflection and personal choice now accompany beliefs and commitments; finding satisfying meaning has become vital.

My conversation with Anne moved on to recognize that the Catholic cultural communities of our youth are disappearing. Former religious language and rituals no longer satisfy contemporary questions and needs. Yet we agreed that we continue to value our Christian Tradition. So what lies at its heart that we still cherish? I found myself saying that, for me, the central truth and revelation of our Tradition is an invitation to know and embrace a sacredness, a transcendent otherness, in our human existence and the cosmos. The role of the stories and myths and rituals and sacraments is to facilitate an engagement with this reality of the sacred. For me, this is foundational to a meaningful existence. Why, then, is our Catholic Institution losing its relevance?

As our Catholic Church struggles with the Fowler transition “from stage three to stage four of faith”, I recognize a subtle but pervasive problem. Catholic religious leaders and teachers do not know how to move beyond the literalism of story-myth to meaning. In upholding the literalism of story they displace truth, and unwittingly fall into what the English philosopher Owen Barfield calls idolatry. What is not truth substitutes for meaning. Most of what I heard when I was growing up, and continue to hear today, about the great myths of our Tradition is a recounting of quasi-historical story. The myth of the Nativity and Christmas is presented with literalism about the biology of a virgin birth and a baby Jesus. On Holy Saturday morning I was sitting with Anne and Madeline, and was touched by the sacredness of this human drama of parenting and childbirth. But Anne had never heard that the myth of the Nativity is centrally relevant to her experience of motherhood. I listen in vain for any proclamation by religious leaders of the sacredness surrounding every birth and all parenting and every life. What is the relevance of the Incarnation if this is not its deepest truth? The Paschal Mystery is so often reduced to the literalism of a last supper and a crucifixion and an appearance from a tomb. I listen in vain for any assurance that seeking forgiveness brings liberation and new life, for any promise that as we enter the daily suffering and selfless decision-making and dying of our human journey we can look forward with hope to a greater fullness of life. The literal stories about Jesus are so often the message. I found myself saying during my saturday morning conversation with Anne that the story of Jesus of Nazareth is the historical language of the myths, and important. But the story is not of itself the meaning and invitation of the myth. It is the daily and life-giving relevance of the truth conveyed by our Christian myths that I believe we hunger for today, but are denied.

The Jungian therapist Robert Johnson has said that “myths are the speech of God”, that “the Bible is our best myth”. But we must know how to read and listen to myth if we are to discover the ageless truths about ourselves which the stories carry. We must be taught. We so often hear the story, but fail to find the meaning. We listen literally, not mythically. We are at risk of idolatry. After the Easter Vigil ceremonies in my local church in Ivanhoe I had a convivial meeting with a friend, who had sung the Exultet for us and who theologises about Eucharist. He mentioned that he had recently been told bluntly by a senior cleric that what he was writing was “wrong”. What he wrote was that the Church has “never proclaimed that Jesus is physically present in the host”, but that “Jesus is sacramentally present”. Here was a crucial distinction between literal and mythic understanding, which the cleric was sadly unable to make. I anticipate that Owen Barfield would have detected literalism and idolatry in a position that declared Jesus to be physically present in a host!

My conversation from the morning was to haunt me during the Easter Vigil. Throughout the liturgy there was not one invitation to those gathered to find any personal or daily life relevance in the liturgy. “Jesus” and “Jesus Christ” were much talked about, without distinction, and with strong historical overtones of events “back then”. The community that had gathered was never invited to embrace the insistent Pauline theology that it is the community now that “is Christ’s body”. In the front of the church there were two large banners proclaiming “He is Risen”. I found myself pondering: “What does it mean to say ‘He is risen’?", “Where is He?”, and “What has His rising got to do with me?” But the meaning of the myth was never addressed. The wonderful myths in Genesis and Exodus and Matthew were read but left to remain in the dusty irrelevance of supposed events “back then”. There was no link to any potentially exciting meaning for our lives today. I left the church feeling dismay and sadness for the many faithful people, young and old, who had gathered. I shared their hunger, but we were not fed.