Pagan Catechetics?

I am currently studying catechetics, which gives me a good opportunity to reflect on pagan and Wiccan religious education.  I'm sure that this audience is well aware that most elders in our community will refuse to take on students until they are at least eighteen and absolutely sure that this is the path that the student wants to follow.  I wrote an earlier post on my experience with Catholic catechesis.  (It wasn't good.)  I strongly disagree with the practice of catechizing children, especially at their parents' insistence and not on their own.

But in any case, let's talk about the difference between theology and professions of faith in religious education.  Now, in most traditionally Christian households, the catechist (be it the parent or someone in the church) usually teaches from a position of faith.  That is to say, they teach by making an example of themselves, living out the life of Christ in their own existence.  The focus is less on actual knowledge of the faith in question and more in moralizing, which is why there are so many adult Christians who have no idea what's in the Gospels or the first thing about sacramental theology, but they know prayers and how to live out the faith.

With paganism, the process is different, but similar.  Most pagans are not born that way (though perhaps this will change), but come upon it later in life.  For most, the first thing they do is educate themselves about the faith by reading.  The actual living out of the faith happens later.  Many pagans are voracious readers.  However, the content that is most readily available to new pagans is somewhat suspect.  No one can argue that, on the whole, most resources available at large, mainstream bookstores are introductory material--basically, how-to manuals on getting started: how to cast a circle, how to honor the Wheel of the Year and so on.  They are books on what Wiccans DO with perhaps a short explanation as to why.  Deeper pagan theology is a bit harder to come by and usually gleaned from a variety of different sources.  Some Wiccans and pagans simply stop after reading a book or two by Silver Ravenwolf or DJ Conway, and no further catechesis occurs.  We are all familiar with these people: we call them fluffy bunnies.  The general opinion on fluffy bunnies is negative, as I'm sure this audience is aware.  But should we really look on them with the disdain that we do?

It's a little unfair to judge pagans for being ignorant or uneducated about their faith when there is no catechetical structure in place.  Pagans who do not have someone in their lives to guide them down the path have to make due with what they have, which, depending on one's area, can be rather dubious information.  With the exception of Cherry Hill Seminary, there is no place for pagans to go to further their education.  It is left up to them to make individual choices about every bit of information they receive.  This naturally results in many different flavors of paganism, which further complicates the catechetical issue.  In every Catholic catechetical class I have sat in on, there is a programmed curriculum based on the students' age that has been handed down from a central authority.  It is obvious why this system would fail in a pagan setting: there is no central authority.

Is there a solution to this problem?  Perhaps.  Perhaps if we hold pagan publishing houses to a higher standard, instead of continuing to purchase from them when they are putting out subpar material to sell more books, we might make room for writers who actually know what they're talking about.  But that does nothing to combat the wealth of bad information available on the internet.  Perhaps we need to change our attitude about people who are new to the faith.  After all, few of them are ever willfully ignorant.  If you consider yourself to be someone in the know, make yourself a resource to the young and new people around you.  Just don't let it go to your head.

My Wicca Testimony

So, today, someone told me that the key to proper catechism (religious education) is testimony.  That is, sharing your own religious experiences but making sure to draw attention to what God has done for you rather than yourself, can be super effective, not to educate, obviously, but to evangelize.  "Bearing witness to Christ" is the best way bring people to the Church.  How to properly share your testimony, though?  Answer these three questions:

1. What was your life like before Christ?
2. How did you convert to Christianity?
3. What is your life like now, with Christ?

Obviously, my testimony will be a little different.

My life before Christ was one of loneliness and isolation (so far so good, right?).  I grew up as basically atheist in a small, rural Christian town.  When I was in middle school, I had friends who asked me things like, "If humans are descended from apes, why are there still monkeys?"  In my class in world history in the sixth grade, my teacher asked me to describe and draw my favorite Bible story.  My mom took me to an Episcopal Church where the homily started out, "Hey, at least we're better than Lutherans!" 

Because this is my Christian story, I'm going to skip over my years as a fledgling witch.  Let's go to college!

I went to a private Catholic institution.  As a part of my curriculum there, I was required to take six hours in theology.  Not a big deal.  I enjoy studying other cultures.  Now, I admit, I was nineteen and naive.  When we got to the Biblical portion of my Intro to Catholicism class, I was pretty good at Biblical interpretation, despite the fact that it was the first time encountering many of the texts.  I earned a lot of praise from my male professor, which admittedly felt pretty good.  I lacked a certain amount of male praise growing up.  I earned a scholarship for community service work.  Some of the projects I was involved with were entirely secular (such as helping catalogue photographs at the local library), but the majority of my projects were through the school, which meant there was a spiritual aspect/reflection in almost everything I did.  I got heavily involved in campus ministry, if (initially) for the community outreach aspect of it.

So, combining all the praise I was receiving in my theology courses and the feeling of being included with campus ministry, along with the isolation I felt being a witch at a small Catholic university, I decided to major in theology.  From there, it only made sense to be confirmed in the Catholic Church, if only for my career.  I don't think I ever really believed in the teachings of the Church.  I was always very uncomfortable with the position of women in the Church.  At the back of my mind, I think I felt as though I could help things along between Catholics and pagans by approaching them using their own language.  I was terribly naive.

After college, I went to work for the Church.  Let me say this: my supervisor was a very good, upstanding man.  He took a chance with hiring me with no experience and I truly appreciate the opportunity.  However, he was also laity.  Almost every priest I met refused to look me in the eye, or even address me directly.  This was off-putting, of course, but I ignored it.  After a few months, I realized that there would be no advancement in my career.  Even more, the issues that were most important to me (such as environmental issues), were completely brushed off by the majority of people I met in a professional capacity.  I say "brushed off," but it was really more like "aggressively ignored."  It was made very clear that these issues were not of interest to the average Catholic.

And then there were the phone calls.  After every weekend, I would dread coming back to work because I knew my voicemail would be inundated with people (Catholic parishioners) swearing and screaming at me because they disagreed with (again, their own Catholic) politics.  It was then that I realized there was no hope approaching Catholics with a pagan perspective, because they couldn't even agree with each other.  I gave up hope and quit my job.

Now, let's go back and tell the story again, but with Wicca.

The inciting incident that led me to Wicca was this: I attended a performance by my nieces and nephews at their Bible Camp.  At the end of the performance, the children parroted off Bible verses without understanding them.  It struck me as very wrong, but it shouldn't have, not if I was truly an atheist.  So I went on a quest for what I believed in.  I went through some of the same struggles that I'm sure a lot of pagans and Wiccans go through: do I really believe this, or do I just want to believe this?  This went on for years, despite experiences that confirmed my beliefs.  I found that traditional Wiccan practices didn't quite fit with my lifestyle, as I've mentioned in a previous post.  Eventually I found a spiritual practice that worked for me and a deity that in her infitine graciousness took interest in me.  (I have to note that it happened in that order; it seemed that when I was more attentive to my beliefs, I attracted more spiritual attention.  Funny how that works.)

Life after Wicca is actually fairly normal.  I work a full-time job, pay my bills, watch movies, read books.  But I have the benefit of being able to see transcendence everywhere.  Deity is all around me.  That is what makes my life rich.

Old and New Perspectives

Without revealing too many details, the only other Wiccan I know (personally) is a woman old enough to be my grandmother, who devoted herself to the Path at a time that would mark her as a first generation American witch ("witch" here referring to the modern usage).  Although she is American born and bred, she identifies as a British Traditionalist Witch.  It seems as though her greatest annoyance with the Wiccan/Pagan community is with the growing Eclectic Wicca movement--but we've had some disagreements about the whole Initiation issue as well.

Of course, someone who has gone through a formal Initiation experience, who has progressed through the traditional levels of teaching, will naturally vouch for their own lived experience, especially if it was significant to them.  Even more so if it was performed well!  However, I hardly need to point out that many second and third generation witches did not have the benefit of nearby covens, and many readily accessible sources have vouched for self-initiation experiences.  For many of us, self-initiation was simply a matter of course.  It may or may not have been as powerful as some of the initiation rituals I've seen described in older sources, for many reasons.  First of all, if the fledgling witch is not well versed in the transformative aspects of ritual or, even worse, completely unaware of them, the whole thing might have come off as empty or even silly.  This, probably more than anything, leads to people turning away from Wicca.

I have recently been reading some of the fourth century baptismal homilies of St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Ambrose.  Interestingly enough, both of these men described the meaning behind baptism and the other sacraments of initiation only after the catechumen had experienced them.  It has been posited that early Christians relied on the mysterious aspect of their rituals to enact a greater change in the individual.  Baptism was, in their eyes, a figurative death and rebirth as a member of the Church and a believer in Christ.  If one were to go back to The Witches' Bible by the Farrars, one will see the same kind of ideas.  Mystery and secrecy were major parts of Wicca.  Now, just about every aspect of our religion is laid bare for anyone who can afford a book from a thrift shop.  And what has happened as a result is something the Catholic Church fought against for centuries.

Up until the Reformation, scripture was written in Latin and the under classes were kept deliberately ignorant, for if they could read the Bible, they might offer alternate interpretations.  Once the cat was out of the bag about Wicca, just about anybody could write just about anything about it and sell books.  I think this is when Initiation, the three hierarchical levels, and the Witch's Pyramid (the corner of which is secrecy) began to disintegrate.

The Wicca my friend practices is not the same as my Wicca.  Is this a bad thing, though?  Maybe she's stuck in the past, or maybe I'm too loosey-goosey.  Or maybe we're both right.  Maybe there isn't even a "right" or a "wrong."  It's interesting though--we can call both Catholics and Protestants "Christians" and still be correct because they worship the same god.  Besides that, some denominations have very little in common.  But I can't even claim that my friend and I worship the same gods!  She believes in the traditional Lord and Lady, while I work with specific named deities.  We celebrate the same holidays, but not in the same way.  What is it that binds us together, makes us somehow "the same"?  Is it just the name?

I think Wiccans are rapidly heading for (or have already collided with) a huge existential crisis.  When there are no more first generation witches, when there is no one who practices "the standard," will Wicca truly still exist?  Or will "British Traditionalists" become a group like the Christian "Shakers" that died out a hundred years ago?  Wicca is evolving, that's a fact.  And as it evolves, it splinters off again and again like the branches of a tree.  Everything on Earth evolves.  So, I guess that great truth applies here again:

As above, so below.