The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder

by Richard Rohr

Many feel that the traditional institutions of our culture are impotent and incapable of communicating believable patterns of wisdom and truth. Lacking authority and credibility, they do not have the power to lead or guide us. We don’t give power to them, and they don’t have the consensus or the confidence to take it. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the scandals of the Trump presidency have made us cynical about government and politics. Recent racially charged trials have made us cynical about the legal-judiciary system. Both Catholic and Evangelical fundamentalism, plus the sexual scandals of the clergy, have made us cynical about religion. Our universities do not make us into universal people, but instead have become mostly job-preparation mills that leave students in debt for most of their careers. At the personal level, our individualism and narcissism have made the skills needed for marriage and family rare. This power and confidence vacuum has opened the door for the far right to seize and exploit the language of religion and God. The televangelist phenomenon, within both Evangelical Protestantism and pious Catholicism, is in great part, I believe, the fault of the liberal establishment in this country, which refuses even to acknowledge transcendence or tradition in any serious way, forcing an overreaction on the other side. Both sides righteously point to the opposite’s extremes to justify their own positions. True greatness never emerges in such periods, I am ...