Break the chains

Editor’s note: The following column appeared in the Sept. 14 issue of The Long Island Catholic, newspaper of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y. It was written by Liz O’Connor, editor.

Everything old is new again. The World Wide Web, in spite of all the ways it’s changed our world, is also a medium for good and bad things that have been around all along. Everything is just speeded up when there’s no need to stick on a stamp or address an envelope.

Lately my e-mailbox has received a number of chain letters. Some seem innocuous, carrying along cheery messages and urging the recipients to forward the e-mail to five or six friends. That could be a day-brightener or a simple pain in the neck.

What I find more distressing are those that carry religious overtones but clearly cross the line into superstition. They’re the ones that include anecdotes about people who said the prayer and forwarded it to 10 fresh e-mail addresses and had their petitions answered in abundance, but also include dire warnings about people who failed to follow directions and were summarily dealt out tragedies.

God knows we’re in favor of prayer and we need all the prayers we can get. But however they’re worded, these are not the prayers of a humble soul seeking the will of the Creator of the universe, nor are they the confident requests of a beloved child who knows the father wants to give his children good things.

These formulas — "Say this prayer and pass it on and God will do X; don’t follow the instructions and God will do terrible things" — are attempts to make God into an omnipotent vending machine or to portray him as the vengeful proctor of an elaborate test. The "Catechism of the Catholic Church" defines such superstitious practices as sins against the First Commandment, the one that says that God is God and we’d better not forget it. We pray for lots of reasons, and God answers our prayers in many different ways, but we mustn’t ever get the idea that we can manipulate God, or that if we just follow a certain magic formula God will be obliged to do what we want him to do.

Years ago The Long Island Catholic established a policy that we would not accept for publication schemes of this type that called for saying a prayer — usually reciting it a number of times — and then publishing the formula. I had many conversations with readers, sometimes quite angry ones, who couldn’t understand why the local Catholic newspaper would object to publishing a prayer. Trying to spare their feelings, I would say, "You may not be using this in a superstitious way, but we can’t be involved in promoting something that might encourage superstition."

The problem with so many of these things is that they’re not obviously evil or sinful — they’re just a little bent, they’ve just taken a wrong turn. Long-standing devotional practices, fine in themselves, from private novenas to public thanksgivings, are turned on their heads. The incidentals — the number of times a prayer is said, or the intention to receive holy Communion on nine consecutive first Fridays — become psychologically more important than the prayer itself, the one to whom the prayer is addressed, or even the Eucharist received.

The current universal catechism defines prayer in just the way I was taught as a child: prayer is the lifting up of the mind and heart to God. That’s what’s at the core of every prayer, whether a rosary or a simple thanksgiving, a silent retreat or an elaborate liturgical celebration. Hedging a prayer around with promises and conditions or threats and warnings is an attempt to tame God, who is ultimately mysterious, all-loving and all-powerful and yet desires intimacy with us. What we know about God we know because God has chosen to reveal himself to us — in his creation, in the history of salvation, in Scripture, and most perfectly in the incarnation of Christ. When we start to think we can set up rules he has to follow, we’re bound to get into trouble.

So if someone suggests you pass along the written equivalent of a pat on the back or an appreciation of nature, there’s no reason not to — and no reason to feel guilty if you’d rather not clutter your friends’ mailboxes. But anytime anyone starts making promises about what God will absolutely do if you follow a formula, or threats about the evil that will befall you if you don’t cooperate, be aware of what’s happening, fearlessly break that chain and get back to praising God.