David Stoltze: Aboriginal Culture, Catholicism And "The Beyond"

Members of the Kalkadoon Aboriginal tribe, circa 1900. Image credit: Vintage Queensland.

David Stoltze: He (David's Kalkadoon aboriginal friend Clive Sam) did tell me that he had had a 13-year battle with alcoholism, and that he had been sober for 18 years now. He views “the grog” as a curse Aboriginal people as a whole. He is strongly of the opinion that alcohol should be banned altogether. I pointed out the US experience of prohibition, and its relation to the rise of organized crime in our country. He didn’t seem too impressed with that argument. I think he relates to it as a “curse” in the true sense of the word. 

His ”take” on how alcoholism gets a hold on people is similar to our own “take” on it: people have various personal problems, and they use it to try to solve them, only to have the problems get worse and become compounded by alcoholism itself. But he also has a sense that alcoholism involves the individual being taken over by an evil spirit. He’s quick to say that he doesn’t think that alcohol itself has magical powers of any kind, and that the curse is some sort of a combination of a poor personal choice and being taken over by an evil spirit who uses the alcohol to take over the person’s spirit. 

At this point, the conversation took (for me, at least) a surprising turn. Clive said that the evil spirit was removed from him in a ceremony performed in the bush by one of his relatives (I don’t remember who) who had become a Christian. It was apparently some sort of exorcism involving “casting out the demon”, and it had a profound effect on him. He became a Christian and says that he still is one today.  He apparently is able to reconcile a belief system which ascribes spirituality to all things living and non-living, as well as a spirit world of beings that he considers to be “real” in a very concrete way, with the teachings of Christianity. This somehow involves the triumph of Jesus over evil spirits. I must admit that my own understanding of this just breaks down here. I don’t understand this type of amalgamation of seemingly contradictory beliefs. I asked him about it, and whether being a Christian didn’t somehow weaken the rest of his belief system or his standing in the Aboriginal community.  He seemed puzzled by the question but didn’t see any major contradictions there. If any of my Christian friends, especially those who have had experience in the Third World, would like to take a crack at this question, I’m listening…

Alan Archibald's reply: The spirit world is a Big Deal in Catholic Christianity with a whole panoply of "players" including thousands of named saints who are invoked to actually intercede in the workings of this world; not to mention the actual presence of the soul of all deceased humans.

C.S. Lewis is wide open to the possibility that all animated life forms may be part of this soulful community.

And then there's "The Trinity" which Chesterton considered Christianity's two-fold "salvation"... certainly when Christianity is compared to the radical monotheism of Judaism and Islam. 

Don't want to get on the wrong side of THAT Dude.

In Catholic Christianity, Chesterton sees that The Godhead "itself" is "triune" and therefore a community within itself. This communitarian circumstance renders the Trinitarian God intrinsically different from the scimitar-sharp rigidity/shattering volcanicity of monotheistic Yaweh -- with the Trinity modeling "community" at the deepest ontological level. 

Consider the practicalities... 

If you want to build anything to "stand" the test of time, you would give it three legs. 

One leg can't stand on its own. 

Two legs can stand for strictly limited period of time. 

But 3 legs stands the test of time. 

So too do 4 and more legs... but they tend to be wobbly. 

And so, there is not ONE ANGRY GOD to be placated/cajoled/won-over, but a deific "cluster" with its own inscrutable internal communitarian dynamics - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Sky-Earth-and-The-Connecting Force between the two).

And then there's the role of Mary, the Mother of God (what a peculiar phrase) through whose indulgence-and-maternal-understanding one can do a "work-around" on Wrathful Sky God..

"Hey, Mom. I pretty sure I pissed off your kid. Would you please take him aside and have a word with him?"

In this kind of otherworldly family-community, it's still understood that "If Mom ain't happy, nobody's happy."

After all, my friend, who are you and I -- mere male appendages -- to argue with the utterly transcendent authority of Mother? 

El hombre "no vale verga."

I realize that this "game plan" doesn't sort well with the protestant intellect, but it's "bang on" in terms of the only REALITY we know.

Check out Jung's take on The Assumption of Mary.

https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2020/05/13/28992/#.YVKbZJrMKM8

http://jungcurrents.com/importance-assumption-virgin-mary

https://d2y1pz2y630308.cloudfront.net/23317/documents/2019/11/A-Singular-Honor-Homily-Assumption-of-Mary-08-15-19.pdf

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David: As we were sitting out there on the highway, the conversation wandered along, and I was able to ask Clive about some other contemporary social problems in the Aboriginal population.

Suicide is a particularly big problem. I’ve heard a couple of younger Aboriginal people who have made suicide attempts say that they “wanted to go to a better place.” I think that this is somehow tied into the idea that the soul and all of creation is eternal, and that time and space are artificial concepts which one can somehow transcend. Clive didn’t directly contradict this idea. Instead, he attributed suicide to the victim being taken over by a spirit. There is a particular kind of evil spirit called a Gadaji that is like a “hit man” who brings another evil spirit to the victim and causes terrible things like alcoholism, violence and suicide.

Alan: I find it interesting that the Gadaji doesn't do the dirty work himself but brings "another evil spirit."

Before moving on, I will state that arrogant and/or impositional religious beliefs do not mix with "democratic" governance.

But even so, I wonder if most humans wouldn't be better off with whatever belief system works for them, provided the belief is grounded in communitarianism.

The evidence is now preponderant that people with religious belief (at least those who people who are not arrogant or impositional about their beliefs) tend to be happier than people without religious belief.

And since uestions pertaining to "the other side" (even to the "other side" of THIS side) cannot be answered, perhaps those of us who tend to be skeptical would (often) be "better off" if we "suspended our disbelief", choosing to believe in a spirit world if for no other reason than we cannot prove otherwise.

And, again, believers tend to be happier than non-believers.

As for the apprehension that this exercise of "freedom of choice" is intellectually dishonest, I think it is at least as dishonest to say NO to belief, as to say YES to belief.

When it comes to the numinous, and the "otherworldly" we don't know.

But we can choose to believe.

In this toss-up between six-of-one, half-dozen-of-another, why not opt to "believe" in any inscrutable domain where knowledge cannot intrude but where the belief system is fundamentally more attractive than the unbelieving alternative. For me, "God is love" is an attractive place to start.

And is it possible that refusing to believe in anything numinous is its own kind of "homocentric" arrogance?

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