We hear this over and over again from people around us, and it really is an unending circular reflection that often ends up with a total rejection of religious affiliation. The fundamental problem is squaring the teachings of Christ with the conflicts and institutionalised evil found in many churches. Churches blame indifference and hostility on affluence, comfort and materialism. Talk with ordinary people, and we usually find they are tired and scandalised. The name of the game is making excuses and passing the buck!

The purpose of this little article is to see what most people mean when they talk about spirituality. When I was at university, we had a discipline within the general category of theology called ascetic theology. This discipline is sometimes called spirituality. It is the study of prayer and mystical experience in those who have it. We studied the characteristic of spirituality as found in the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament, and went through the Fathers of the Church and the variations within the great religious orders. The Divine Office is of particular importance to Benedictine monks, poverty to Franciscans, obedience to Jesuits – even if all those characteristics are present in one proportion or another in all religious communities and individual Christians seeking holiness.

However, spirituality has a wider meaning and is a concept known to all religious traditions in the world. If we look for definitions of this word, we will find complex and conflicting meanings.

To resume a few, we find notions like what is incorporeal or immaterial, what is opposed to the material. That is a particularly dualist definition coming from that attitude that refuses any participation of one being in another or any perichoreisis, the Greek term to describe the relationships between the Persons of the Trinity and which can be extended to other metaphysical categories.

Another definition will tell you that spirituality is about being deeply religious or devout, which does not allow the distinction most ordinary people make, believing that it is possible to be spiritual without being religious (or at least formally affiliated to a church). Related to spirit and sacred matters – that is another possibility. Perhaps here, spirit can be defined as the aspect of a person that survives physical death and is either taken to a level of life that is completely beyond our experience or is reincarnated.

Another and more secular definition shows spirituality as the meaning of life. Whether or not we believe in God or pray, we are faced with metaphysical categories like good and evil and the desire to bring good into the world. Many people I meet who do not have a taste for formal religious observances or belonging to a parish or other community believe that it is important to be sensitive to the things of the spirit. These things are understood as escaping our five senses, but yet are metaphysical realities like love, justice, virtue, peace, beauty – what Plato calls the transcendentals. Together with an aspiration to these aspects of life, most people I know cannot stomach the thought of non-existence after death. From this fundamental instinct comes a belief in the afterlife, which is confirmed by observable phenomena – see Victor Zammit’s Afterlife Evidence.

Spirituality seems to mean an aspiration towards the transcendent, what lies beyond our present experience and which confers meaning on life. It seems to be the “sea” on which the “ships” of religions sail. It is something universal and unconfined by credal limits and human control.

Spirituality is present in Christianity and the Gospels are full of it, but yet it is present in all religions and philosophical systems except the most atheistic and materialist of them. The eastern religions, especially Hinduism, see spirituality as a life-long work of penetrating one’s own personality and soul to find enlightenment, mystical experience and a notion of “salvation” or “deification”. Western religions, including the western inculturation of Christianity, emphasise outward works and observances.

Most people I meet say they fail to find the Transcendent in religious observance as they find it in their local parish, but rather are confronted with the scandal of division, conflict, hypocrisy, wanton evil in some cases – things that are characteristics of the materialist anti-spiritual world. I see this as the main problem in churches and why people disconnect. Churches often take the easy way and become branches of politics, ideologies of control and domination and another form of materialism. It becomes a characteristic of clerical “systems” and “castes”.

Certainly, the contemplative life remains present in the Roman Catholic Church through the monastic life and lay spirituality associated with monasteries and other communities. There are also the “new communities” like the Charismatics and monastic-like communities allowing married and lay membership. All that is positive and to be encouraged, but it has to be realised that very few people are touched. My wife and I visited a community of the Chemin Neuf, a charismatic community. They are certainly prayerful, but the words formed in our minds – cul bénit – meaning something like saying church mouse in English. There are the overtones of bigotry and intolerance behind a smiling and inviting mask.

If churches want to attract people, not only to keep the money flowing into the coffers so as not to have to sell off the church buildings, but to share the Gospel with them, then there has to be more sincerity, more transparency, more openness, more spirituality. I can only reflect what I hear around me. Now I do read reflections about the future of “real muscular” Christianity being in conservative and anti-liberal churches, whether they be the Rome of Benedict XVI or the American fundamentalist theocrats. I can think of nothing worse than a return to nineteenth-century bigotry! I have to admit that this article was sparked off by Christianity isn’t dying (HT) as well as a discussion between myself, my wife and a friend yesterday afternoon.

In the absolute, spirituality is at its best when the person belongs to a universal sacramental communion in which Christ’s Mystery is rendered present through the liturgy. That will not be so when the parish or whatever, that person’s only contact with the Church, contradicts it own very principles and beliefs. Then that person would indeed be better alone in a purely spiritual communion with others.

I just pick out two sentences that seem to affirm American conservative religion

So, if not extinction, what does the future look like? I don’t think it looks like Europe, shaped by historic religious wars and legally mandated religion. Instead, if trends continue, I believe that the future will look more like the present-day Pacific Northwest. There, we find a majority of the population is spiritual but not religious, yet vibrant churches and devout Christians abound.

What, pray, is a vibrant church? I suppose it would be one that can pack in the most tithe-paying people and make the most successful business. For most of us Europeans, it’s not our way – but we’re not a mass of atheists! Here’s another one:

The future of Christianity in America is not extinction but clarification that a devout faith is what will last. Christianity in America isn’t dying, cultural Christianity is.

So once they have got rid of the people who are still clinging on for dear life and the culs bénits take over, the cultural Christians are gone, and – logically – all that remains is non or anti cultural Christianity, then I suppose it will be the reign of the Christian Ubermensch and the new elite. It makes me shiver.

Then we really need to work on Christianity outside churches!