Here’s a story about an experiment which sought to “test” the parable of the “Good Samaritan” on a group of pastors.
It found that performance was most related to two factors:
- Whether the pastors were intrinsically motivated by religion, or saw it as a means to an end.
- How rushed they were.
It found that many “failed” the “Good Samaritan test” when they were hurried.
In low hurry situations, 63% helped, medium hurry 45% and high hurry 10%
Here’s the original journal article, which requires payment to read online:
“From Jerusalem to Jericho”: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. Darley, John M.; Batson, C. Daniel. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 27(1), Jul 1973, 100-108
Richard Rohr: Refuse to Eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
That’s why all great traditions teach some form of contemplation, because it is actually a different form of knowledge that emerges inside of the “cloud of unknowing.” It is a refusal to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and finding freedom, grace, and comfort in the not needing to know, which ironically opens us up to a much deeper consciousness that we would call the mind of God.
Richard Rohr: Faith as “Trust” or “Confidence”
Once you are “grafted to the Vine,” to use Jesus’ words (John 15:4-5), you really don’t have to be anxious about many things (Luke 10:40). You really don’t have to be worried about the next moment or about tomorrow (Matthew 6:34). What you can trust is that you are being guided; in fact, almost everything is seen as guidance. It’s your ability to trust that there is guidance available which allows it to become guidance! You realize that God is letting this happen to you now to teach you something, to show you something, or to love you in a new way. Basically you switch from the fixing, fully understanding, and controlling mode to the trusting, listening, and allowing mode.
.. Faith, as we see in the Hebrew Scriptures and Jesus’ usage of the same, is much closer to our words “trust” or “confidence” than it is about believing doctrines to be true (which demands almost no ego surrender or real change of the small self).
The Pope and the Precipice
Those adherents are, yes, a minority — sometimes a small minority — among self-identified Catholics in the West. But they are the people who have done the most to keep the church vital in an age of institutional decline: who have given their energy and time and money in an era when the church is stained by scandal, who have struggled to raise families and live up to demanding teachings, who have joined the priesthood and religious life in an age when those vocations are not honored as they once were. They have kept the faith amid moral betrayals by their leaders; they do not deserve a theological betrayal.
.. They can certainly persist in the belief that God protects the church from self-contradiction. But they might want to consider the possibility that they have a role to play, and that this pope may be preserved from error only if the church itself resists him.