Pop 89: Dignity is the Point
By Madonna Hamel
Dignity. That's a word that's dropped out of the cultural vocabulary these days. However, ever since my tentative and sporadic return to my childhood religious tradition, I've been reading lots of theology, which is filled with calls for the protection of human dignity.
I study theology because our cultural tendency to make gods of rich and famous people, faster and "smarter" technologies, influencers and athletes, doesn't take my own religious inclinations far enough. Theology gives me a vocabulary for the miraculous, transcendent, and spiritual experiences of my life. Religious language has the capacity to resist the secular temptation to reduce truth to a movable feast.
"Siblings All, Sign of the Times," written by Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny and Italian priest Christian Barone, looks at Pope Francis' social teachings. Francis encouraged inter-religious dialogue because religious language offers a description of human persons beyond seeing them as enemies, lost causes, disposable beings, anything but brothers and sisters.
Inter-religious dialogue is "not just for the sake of diplomacy and tolerance," but for the sake of being a witness to "every human's inherent dignity." And that means, for keeping religious and spiritual language alive, in the civil conversation. As Czerny and Barone write: "Sharing spiritual experiences, openly seeking truth and co-operating in works of charity can transmit spiritual and moral values, principles and ideals to a society that would otherwise be lacking in them."
If we don't have or use the language of religion, we can't talk of religious experiences. We can end up reducing or diverting our experiences and their deeper significance to stress, being overworked, having a senior moment or an overactive imagination. Or maybe, we're just plain nuts.
As a long-time journalist, I would watch as a look of incredulity passed over the faces of some of my fellow reporters if I let it slip I was looking into my childhood faith, this time with adult eyes. Their smiles would get a little frozen as they took tiny steps backward, as if seeking the nearest exit. Apparently, a whole new assessment of our friendship would be called for. But, I'm no fanatic, I keep my mystical experiences close to my heart. My re-acquaintance with the Beloved is pretty private. Because, if totally honest, I'd probably behave like my journalist pals if faced with someone like me.
But if anyone were to ask me to relate the conversion experience that brought me back for another look around at my Catholic roots, I would have to say: Which one? There have been so many moments of undeniable sensing of the presence of the Divine, of falling into the arms of the Absolute, of long sighs of deep relief upon feeling upheld in what Francis calls "the transcendent foundation of human experience."
A dominant culture that toes the Enlightenment and secularist line" has always felt limited to me, precisely because it cannot afford me the dignity of my religious experiences. It may be that many witnesses to miracles were burdened with mental instability, or food poisoning, or are generators of hoaxes. But it may also be that, without a language of miracles, we can't spot them when we see them. We live in a world noisy with voices speaking the language of degradation, desecration, snark and gossip. We are tuned to the very worst in each other - primed for the next scandal. So, of course, that is what we spot first.
The voices that interest me are the voices upholding dignity - their own and everyone else's. Sister Joan Chittister's latest column speaks of "a kind of poverty even more difficult to deal with than the need for clothes. It is the dignity—the humanity— that those stripped naked of soul and psyche, body and reputation, most stand to lose in a world that lacks compassion. We sell newspapers on this kind of nakedness daily. The headlines read: 'Socialite family shattered by expensive divorce case', 'Rape details released',' Suspect's background reviewed'….It never ends, this exploitation of emotions, this public disclosure of private information, this exoteric parading of embarrassing data that serves no possible purpose."
While religion is not the sole domain of dignity, the word comes from the Old French for "worth". We tend to speak of "undignified" behaviour more than our inherent "dignity," reducing its inclusivity and urgency, but we are all worthy in God's eyes.
The hip among us may not care whether some of our actions appear undignified. "Screw you," we say to those who find our behaviours' unbefitting a lady.' When celebrities, celebrated for talking trash or sexualizing every word, movement and moment, are criticized for their portrayal of humanity in the most undignified way, their best response is: "You don't like it, don't watch it." But, while "dignified" may be a style, "dignity" is an inherent right. And, I would even go so far to say: a responsibility.
"The Cruelty Is the Point" is a collection of essays by Adam Serwer. Cogently outlined, with valuable insights into the language of the current presidency, Serwer calls out the creepy ways large swaths of Americans actually enjoy cruel language. His point is well-taken. But I am left asking: What next? Where now? Where is the discussion to transcend cruel talk? Where is the impetus to restore our own dignity in the conversation?
Critical thinking and interpretation is the first step, but it can't be the goal, in the same way that cruelty should never be the means or ends of a political party's climb and hold on power.
Cruel language and trash talk abound - the worldly world is full of smart asses hurling jabs at each other, hoping to land a punch, inflict or widen a wound, thus turning the world into a battlefield. Pope Francis called on the Church to be "a field hospital." We'd all do well to be nurses in that hospital, applying the balm of dignity on all and every wound.