Spiritual Friendship In Catholicism
Nothing Catholic about the rugged individualist archetype
Living as an unmarried man or woman is one of the four vocations in the Catholic world. There seems to be a greater emphasis on the other three of married, ordained and religious so the vocation to the single life is often overlooked and even ill-defined. One could also describe it as serving Christ and His Church through the deepest of human relationships: friendship.
We cannot understand this vocation until we discover the meaning of its central element.
One source for discovering the meaning of friendship comes to us from the twelfth century. This may seem like a distance to seek such an important truth but we may need to go back that far to find the more accurate definition not tainted by faulty Christian morals. This was a century after the great schism of 1054 between Catholicism and what is known as Orthodox Christianity, between the East and West. It was also long before the shattering of the Christian world in the sixteenth Century with the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic response in the Council of Trent.
Martin Luther brought Christianity into the sola scriptura era where the Bible alone becomes the source of dogma but that turns the Bible into a law unto itself. One need only go to last sentence in the Gospel of John to see there is a great wealth of Jesus’ teachings never recorded. Nothing in our faith can contradict scripture because Jesus would not say one thing and then the opposite “off the record” but we know He taught more than we can read in the Gospels.
St. Aelred of Rievaulx in the twelfth century penned the classic Spiritual Friendship. A Cistercian abbot from England, some claim today he had a homosexual orientation. We have to be careful of those words, however. The term homosexual did not exist until about two hundred years ago. The word “gay” which derives from homosexual did not come into use until the late 20th Century. Therefore, today’s use of either term did not exist in the eleven hundreds, maybe even the inclination was not so finely defined.
If a person finds his soulmate through Christ then that is just as Catholic as any other form of holy life in Christ.
Often today Christians define relationships primarily in binary terms. So many consider it abominable for two people of the same sex to describe their friendship in terms of love. St. Aelred of Rievaulx would not be one of them.
True friendship, he explained, begins and ends in Christ and true friends would lead each other more deeply to Christ.
He taught that friendship is a virtue of love just as the word amicus (friend) comes from the Latin noun for love which is amor. The Online Etymology Dictionary lists the English word friend to be from the Nordic word for lover. So when we are talking about Christian friendship as Aelred taught, we are talking about a virtuous relationship anchored in true love and in Christ who is the incarnation of love.
This, of course, is a deeper understanding than the American English word for friend or even the more superficial use: Facebook friends. True friends, he wrote, have a unity of wills and intentions.
Aelred explains that love is at the root of all communities of creatures, sentient and non-sentient. He adds true friendship is an essential element of all existence. A human being cannot exist without friends.
He cites three levels of friendship: carnal which is a bond rooted in vice. He does not go into specific detail however, it may be a sexual vice or another form of vice. Alcoholics will tell you about their drinking buddies — best friends whose relationship revolves around alcohol. However, let one of them quit drinking and their friendship will end. This is the first kind of friendship where the glue that holds two together is the vice they share.
The second form is the worldly where one is friends with another ultimately for worldly gain. It is advantageous for them to be friends on a worldly level either financially or for some other gain. These are the friends who disappear when trouble comes into your life.
Finally, the third level is the spiritual where there is union of mind and heart, desires and intention so that the Christian friends seek what is the best for each other. They have an agreement of things human and divine with good will and charity.
This friendship is the fulfillment of all human existence and is blessed in Christ. He calls others to aspire to it. Our culture now does not embrace his teaching. The concept of two people of the same sex united in love in union with mind and heart, albeit platonic, is almost forbidden, even though centuries ago it was the model of true friendship and the highest form of human relationship.
Remember that in the North American culture, especially in the United States, the virtuous model of the man is the rugged individualist. It is the lone cowboy who fights for righteousness and against the injustices of the culture.
St. Aelred’s explanations show us this is not the model that the Christian should seek, especially the single Christian man or woman.
The American archetype is an unsustainable model.
St Thomas Aquinas, who lived a generation later, taught that in order to do well in the Christian life, whether in active pursuit of charitable acts or in contemplation, one needs friends. (cf Summa Theologica I-II question: 4 a.8 response) In fact, we know today the rugged individualist who becomes the cultural hero often dies alone. Our American history is rife with them.
St. Aelred uses the Biblical account of David and Jonathan to illustrate spiritual friendship. David is the upstart despised by the king and Jonathan is the son of the king. They lived with a unity of heart, desire and will. So much so that they made a covenant with each other and, we read in 1 Samuel 18, Jonathan loved David as his very self. The son of the king promised to serve the upstart who would be king and did not seek to be king himself. This model of friendship is anathema to the American archetype. Today it seems that for Christians, such friendship must be avoided by the good disciple. St. Aelred instead taught in Christ it is the highest form of love. It should rather be pursued.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains friendship is essential to living the chaste life to which Aelred refers.
The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends, who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality.
Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one’s neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion. (CCC2347)
St. John Henry Newman and Ambrose St. John were such friends. NPR, following the American Christian model, questioned this relationship. Of course, for the Catholic that reflects a lack of understanding on the part of National Public Radio. There is nothing in Catholic teaching that dismisses this chaste relationship as anything but a blessing from God.
According to NPR, St. John Henry Newman wrote at the death of Ambrose St. John: “I have always thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband’s or a wife’s,” he wrote, “but I feel it difficult to believe that anyone’s sorrow can be greater than mine.”
This is spiritual friendship.
Christianity has a call to be counter-cultural and maybe by embracing the true definition of friendship, unmarried Catholics may live something lost in the civil western world.
For more information see: Spiritual Friendship by Aelred of Rievaulx, The current available version from which I drew my explanation here is from Cistercian Publications, 2010 Order of St. Benedict, Collegeville, MN