Pluribus

There’s a lot of talk about normal—“the return to normal,” “the new normal,” “normalcy.” But how will we know it when we find it? And was it ever what we thought it was anyway?

From the Fall 2021 issue of Sacred Heart University Magazine

By David Coppola

The coffee that starts your day. The television program that ends it.

The commencement exercise at the completion of your university degree.

The sacraments and “smells and bells” of Catholic Mass.

Their practice gives a sense of normalcy to life, moments of reassuring predictability answering questions before they get asked. If your day starts with coffee, it starts with coffee—no question. If your Sunday morning involves going to church, that practice alone—completely separate from any merits of faith—is a mental oasis. In an uncertain world, even just one hour a week of certainty (“I will be at Mass. We will sing. There will be a homily and Communion, followed by coffee and doughnuts.”) is itself a balm for the soul.

There are other benefits, too. Rituals help define the community, however diverse that community may otherwise be. Every student is awarded a diploma upon graduation. Regardless of their differences or the diversity in race, age, gender, nationality, background, faith, et cetera, that ritual articulates what brought—and kept—them together.

At the same time, the practice of ritual elevates the individual specifically by pointing to that larger community. Its purpose is more dynamic than the simple instance of its practice. Consider: the quality of one’s education is no more cheapened by the absence of a commencement exercise than is a person kept young by avoiding the celebration of their birthday. In both instances, the ritual of celebration uses the event as a means of celebrating something much larger—that in community no one is one alone.

So it is easy to understand the clamor for the return of so many rituals that have been disrupted, and in some cases completely abandoned, over the last year and a half. In their absence, people increasingly find themselves feeling adrift, alone, uncertain and distrustful. In our haste to return to “normal,” however, let us not mistake the benefits that come from ritual for the qualities and values that inspired those rituals in the first place.

Here at Sacred Heart University, our mission is informed by two institutions replete with ritual—higher education and the Catholic Church. Both have at their heart a mission to cultivate truth, trust and unity.

The structure of modern higher ed has its origins in the University of Bologna, Europe’s oldest university, founded in 1088. The ritual of education, however—that engagement of trust between teacher and student drawing out understanding, virtue and eventually wisdom in the participants for the betterment of all—is of course much older. What Bologna (and nearly all universities since) managed to do was codify that goal of cultivating community where the gifts of the Holy Spirit (wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, piety and fear of the Lord) would be evident, achieved by committing one’s trust to the magisters, faith, the joy of truth and, above all, the love of God.

But again, the unity of the community should not be mistaken for anything like homogeneity. To expect uniformity in higher education is to assume memorization is the pinnacle of learning when, in fact, quite the opposite is true. Bold ideas are the antithesis of rote memorization. They are the product of divergence. Further, their merit and worth are tested in challenging scrutiny from a variety of perspectives, experiences, fields of expertise and so on. Indeed, a fundamental ritual in academia is the “defense” of one’s dissertation. Throughout history, disagreement produces the new idea and diversity tests it. Where unity exists is in the community’s passionate quest for a higher truth.

Not that these lofty goals have never faltered. In his 1977 book, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity (revised 2006), British divinity professor James Dunn illustrates how early Christian scholarship errantly pointed more toward an either-or/unity-in-uniformity narrative as regards the early Jewish-Christian relationship. Unfortunately, as Dunn explains, this stemmed less from actual uniformity and more from a sense of personal preservation and career advancement. Early universities were heavily influenced by the Church, and the work of the scholar was expected to be consonant with the teachings of the Church. This connection between loyalty to authority and the determined merit of one’s scholarship powerfully influenced scholars and eventually became part of the rationale for professorial tenure.

It also created an illusion of uniformity when, in truth, challenging authority was much more the foundation—both to higher ed and the Church. Consider Abraham’s “bargaining” with God to have mercy on Sodom (Genesis 18) or the often-contrary opinions of great rabbis in the Talmud or even the former official position of the devil’s advocate, who would argue against the canonization of a proposed candidate for sainthood. Even the earliest saints of the Church, Peter and Paul, vigorously argued with one another (see also Galatians 2:11-13). Dialogue and disagreement, when handled respectfully, do not divide. Quite the opposite. They lead to deeper understanding, truth and a unity rooted in mutual respect—a goal not only of the Church but of the liberal arts tradition since at least the days of Socrates and Plato.

What is different about this moment in which we find ourselves is not the quantity of disagreement in the world, but rather its quality: the suspicion—and often contempt—with which disagreement is currently exercised. When Abraham challenges God in Genesis, he does so with humility. He is a student whose understanding of his master does not marry with what he is being told. “Far be it from you,” Abraham cautiously says, “to kill the righteous with the wicked. ... Will not the Judge of all the Earth do right?” Likewise, as Peter and Paul wrestled with the direction of the earliest Church, they did so with an appreciation of each other’s best intentions in service of the Lord. Even devil’s advocates and those challenging candidates’ dissertations perform their antagonistic roles not to hinder, but rather to help those they face arrive at a purest truth, reasoned, tested and proven. Unfortunately, this long-understood ritual—honoring the best intentions of those with whom we may disagree, valuing unity in diversity—seems to be lacking in our quest to return to “normalcy.”

Humans are at our best when we trust in the dignity and good will of others and when we resolve to do deeds of justice and compassion together. The rituals that help us accomplish such a mission are at their best when they are performed with thoughtful intentionality. Consider the rituals around greeting. In the Western cultures, the practice is to shake hands. In Eastern cultures, it is to bow. In both cases, the ritual originates in the performance of vulnerability, of physically expressing that one is not a threat and trusting that the same is true in reciprocation. What is the practice of wearing a mask in public if not exactly that? Yet even as we have seen the power of a mask to help save lives, it is met with the unmasked and acerbic suspicion of science, government and other institutions, largely because it is a ritual that seems disruptive to the familiar comfort of the rituals that have come before, even as both serve the same end. In short, the practice of a ritual has come to be valued over its purpose.

If we are to become one as Jesus calls us to be, then the time to be leaven in the world is now. The end of the past academic year and the start of this one saw many universities returning to the rituals of awards, ceremonies, commencements and celebrations. The speeches at these events carried great import in the name of unity and diversity and the dignity of the individual and community. The extra efforts to provide generous hospitality, celebration and trust were a call to recommit to unity and com-munity—especially in the lingering adversity and doubt over the future of the economy and continued health challenges. Our journey forward as a University, Church and people compels us to reexamine our rituals, to rediscover the humility lying at their core, to trust in the dignity of the other and dedicate ourselves to fostering old and new rituals that bring life, truth and support to all in God’s name, who is Unity in Diversity.

David Coppola is Sacred Heart’s former senior vice president of administration and planning.