Going round in circles may or may not be beneficial, though it seems an apt description of much of what we do. And our runaround is not always, or even often, followed by relaxation.

Whatever we may feel about going around in circles, few of us, if any, would dispute the value and necessity of fidelity in our lives.

Looking at dogs and their fidelity, I realize that this virtue — whether in a dog or a human — is grounded in history. It is actualized in the present, based in the past. That seems obvious enough. Neither a dog nor a person can be loyal to someone or something which he or she has as yet not encountered.

It is because I have taken care of a dog in the past that it is loyal to me today. It is because of kindnesses, friendships, experiences and commitments in the past that I am loyal to various persons, groups and ideas today.

Of course, like any virtue, fidelity can be perverted, as when someone puts loyalty to a person, an institution, a nation or even the Church above the demands of justice or common sense. Calls upon a person's loyalty can sometimes be used as a club to beat people into betraying their better natures, their best interests, even the laws of God or society.

Nevertheless, our capacity for loyalty is one of our better traits, and the world would be a much lonelier and more dangerous place without it.

However, the fact that this human virtue is also a canine virtue should alert us to the possibility that it might not rank as high as others in the hierarchy of virtues.

Might there not be a similar virtue that we share with God as the dog shares fidelity with us, an apotheosis of loyalty?

There is, though we lack an English word for it and are forced to use a word usually synonymous with fidelity or loyalty: faithfulness.

In the Hebrew Bible, God's relationship with us is described as hesed, translated as loving kindness or faithfulness. Insofar as it denotes God's commitment to us in spite of our faults and failings, it resembles loyalty so much as to be mistakable for it.

There is, however, an important difference. Loyalty grows out of the past; faithfulness reaches back to us out of the future. Loyalty is historical, based on experience. Faithfulness is eschatological, based on promise and hope. God relates to me now out of the fulfilment of all things in Christ, "the plan he was pleased to decree in Christ" (Eph. 1:9-10). God is the faithful one.

We too are capable of and called to live this virtue of faithfulness, to live in commitment not solely for the sake of what has been, but for the hopeful vision of what can be, what will be.

When we take marriage vows or make some other life commitment, we commit ourselves to faithfulness. We do not know where faithfulness will lead, but we know that it can only last so long as we remain open to new experiences, new insights, new disappointments, new failures, new triumphs and new mysteries.

A commitment to follow Christ has in it elements of loyalty to what Jesus said and did and what the Church has said and done. But, above all, it is a commitment to live in faithful hope for the coming of the Kingdom for which Jesus taught us to pray.

History has only reached as far as today. The past has not yet been fulfilled. It will change as times change, as the legacy of the past bears new fruits, and is adopted and adapted to meet the coming of the future. That meeting is, in a sense, one definition of the present.

Loyalty to the past does not embalm it; it trusts the One who says: "See, I am making all things new" (Rev. 21:5). And "all things" include not only the traditions and practices of our communal past but also our personal experiences and memories. So, in faithfulness our loyalty is subjected to a new making by God.

A dog does not know that God in Christ is making all things new. The virtue of loyalty alone is sufficient for it. I, however, must combine fidelity to what God has done with faithfulness to what God is doing and will do. I must be willing to risk committing myself today to what is yet unseen. That, perhaps, is the reason the root of "faithfulness" is "faith."

Only humankind is capable of taking the risk of subserving loyalty to faithfulness. We are free to not do so. The alternative, though, is to spend our lives going in circles between the past and present rather than in a line to the future.

First published in ucanews.com
Fr William Grimm is publisher of ucanews.com.

To me, the most memorable voice in the St. John's Passion has always been that of Pontius Pilate. After struggling fruitlessly to undo the inevitability of Christ's death, confronted with the real certainty of executing the world's most innocent person, Pilate is shaken to the core. He is left clinging to one existential question: "What is truth?"

As we are often reminded on Good Friday, Pilate is a puppet, the local symbol of a government and a society that required Christ dead to avoid losing its own power and influence. Pilate hides his own responsibility for the death of Jesus behind the will of his people and his Caesar.

"Why is it," Kierkegaard asks, "that people prefer to be addressed in groups rather than individually? Is it because conscience is one of life's greatest inconveniences, a knife that cuts too deeply? We prefer to 'be part of a group,' and to 'form a party,' for if we are part of a group it means goodnight to conscience."

Pilate's error, Kierkegaard concludes, is a fundamental failure to recognize that Christ is the truth: more specifically, that Christ's life is testament to the truth and that truth requires participating in that life and experience. Pilate's greatest barrier to unambiguous participation in the truth was the comfort and security of a powerful institution. By Kierkegaard's time, the powerful institution was the Danish church.

The "grand cast of characters" that make up the clergy, along with their "complete inventory" of buildings and sacred objects work well, Kierkegaard argues, only when an authentic Christianity is present in the hearts of believers. If the faith of the people is weaker, however, these objects merely create the false impression of faithfulness: "The illusion of a Christian nation, a Christian 'people,' masses of Christians, is no doubt due to the power that numbers exercise over the imagination." Continue reading

Sources

• Chase Nordengren in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Clarion Journal

Robert's piece appeared in Tui Motu. It is not available online: Read below

As I advance towards the end of my seventh decade I am increasingly aware that a significant number of my Catholic contemporaries have left the Church. Many have also ceased to believe in a creator God. Many are theologically literate and have played an active role in parish communities. Some are former priests and seminarians well-trained in the minutiae of Catholic teaching.

I have learnt that the choices they have made to leave the Church are mostly well thought out and rational. Often the initial trigger to leave the Church was disgust at the corruption, intellectual dishonesty and the evil of clericalism.

I respect and understand these choices. They are based on another way of trusting life. However, I choose differently!

These friends and colleagues have continued to live exemplary lives committed to social justice, feeding the hungry, campaigning for the environment, in short following the teachings of Jesus.

Astrophysics calculates that the world was created more than 13.7 billion years ago with the 'big bang.' Modern human beings originated about 150,000 years ago.

The bible began to emerge 3,500 years ago. Christianity emerged less than 2000 years ago. The Enlightenment, which sought to understand the world solely on the basis of reason based on evidence and proof, emerged a mere 300 years ago.

I recently acquired a photo of the planet earth taken by the Cassini-Juygens probe when it arrived at the ring of Saturn. This mind-blowing photo shows the earth as a speck of dust! Only 4% of the universe is known. What we know is a drop - the unknown is an ocean.

In times of doubt I have often wondered if the idea of God is simply a projection of a human need. Millions of human beings have felt this need for thousands of years, and acted accordingly. This in itself could be enough.

Until the Middle Ages the meaning and purpose of life was assumed to be the glory of God. All cultures have historically created some religious belief. The discarding of one belief is normally replaced with another: new age, the market, the rational, Marxism, fascism, astrology, science, politics. Are these other forms of projection?

Faith in a creator God has to be intellectually satisfying and credible. It cannot ultimately depend on the contemporary state of any institution including the Catholic Church! It also has to satisfy me emotionally, spiritually, intuitively and above all, experientially. It has to be reasonable. The rational by itself is far too limiting.

As my life journey has evolved, no matter how chaotic or traumatic, I have always had a trust in people and their inherent goodness. This sense of the divine permeating all of life was embedded in me from a very early age - family, church, school. Some of the most faith-filled people I have met were working in third world slums, war zones, prisons and ghettos.

Living with doubt is an important element of the journey. My shadow side remains a constant challenge.

Why stay with the Church? Because this precious gift called faith has to be constantly nurtured, maintained, developed and connected to the life of Jesus!

If we consider the time line of 'big bang,' the emergence of modern human beings, the 'Enlightenment' was only yesterday and Christianity the day before. The only thing we know is how little we know!

Divine creation through evolution continues to unfold!

Robert comes from Christchurch and has a passion for social justice, from involvement in the civil rights movement in the USA to international relief in third world countries. He has long been involved in Treaty of Waitangi workshops. With his daughter he is the co-author of "Healing our History" a much-praised book exploring the challenge of the Treaty of Waitangi

This piece was published in the July 2011 edition of Tui Motu Interislands