As far as the stages of faith development used in this present book, they are based for the most part on the work of James Fowler and his colleagues, as well as inspired by the pioneering work done by forerunners in developmental psychology such as Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, and Lawrence Kohlberg, along with others who have been brainstorming in this field as of late. I should stress that my contribution is not meant either to endorse the work of all these researchers as being the last word on this topic or, on the other hand, to try to critique their findings in any serious way — I am hardly in a position to do so. Much the same could be said of the earlier work of Pierre Babin in France upon which I have drawn. I only use their work as a handy framework or scheme with which I can elaborate some of the major variations and implications of Frankl’s central insight as it applies to the life of faith and spiritual growth.
So what this book most of all proposes to do is not so much to spell out all the details of the various stages or levels of faith as to try to help the reader understand why it is that all too often our faith fails to develop as it should. In this respect faith development becomes synonymous with “spiritual development” or growth in spirituality, even holiness. In this vein, even my use of Frankl, like my use of the latest in developmental research and theory, is primarily meant to help us understand the particular challenges that face us at each stage in hopes that we will be able to guide ourselves to a more mature spiritual life as well as a better understanding of the psychodynamics of faith.
It is here, especially when it comes to the higher reaches of spirituality, that we come full circle and will find, I maintain, that the wisdom of the great mystics and religious thinkers of the past remains eternally valid even when understood in a new light. Thus, what I have borrowed from Frankl is only a new restatement of the central truth behind all religious faith, when it is actually and authentically lived.
Although regrettably, since the first publication of this book, Viktor Frankl has passed from this world (as well as Karl Rahner — another luminary of our time) there are others to whom I am indebted and who are fortunately still with us. Among them is Donna Kustusch, O.P., who first introduced me to the work of James Fowler some years before the publication of his first major book, as well as those who read through much of this manuscript before it’s initial publication, among them being Bruce Gotts, Tim Uhlmann, Tony Morse, Shelly Fitzgerald, and Mary Flinn. Special thanks are also due to Larry Boadt, CSP, the late Director of Paulist Press, under whose guidance this book first took its printed form.
Richard W. Kropf
Johannesburg, Michigan
March, 2012
Further Acknowledgments:
All scriptural quotations, unless otherwise noted, were taken either from The Jerusalem Bible, edited by Alexander Jones or The New Jerusalem Bible, edited by Henry Wansbrough, both published by Doubleday and Company, 1966 and 1985.
Passages from The Teachings of the Second Vatican Council are as edited by Gregory Baum, and published by The Newman Press in 1963.
I also wish to acknowledge the following publishers and holders of copyrights:
The Bollingen Foundation for material taken from The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, published in the United States by Princeton University Press.
Crossroad Press for material from Avery Dulles, The Survival of Dogma, 1982.
Doubleday and Company for material from Hans Kung’s Theology for the Third Millennium: An Ecumenical View, translated by Peter Heinegg (1988).
Harper and Row for James W. Fowler’s Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning (1981) and Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian: Adult Development and Christian Faith (1984); and for the passage quoted from Paul Tillich’s The Dynamics of Faith (1957).
Herder and Herder for passages from Pierre Babin’s The Crisis of Faith: The Religious Psychology of Adolescence, translation by Eva Fleischner, 1963.
The Institute for Carmelite Studies for a quotation from The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1973).
New American Library for material taken from Viktor E. Frankl’s The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy (1969).
W.W. Norton for selections from Erik Erikson’s Young Man Luther (1958) and Gandhi’s Truth (1969).
Random House/Vintage publishers for the quotations from: Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity, originally published by Pantheon Books, 1951; Viktor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy, originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., (1955, 1965).
The Religious Education Association of the United States and Canada for information taken from the 1985 study Faith Development in the Adult Life Cycle produced in conjunction with the Gallup Organization.
Simon and Schuster, for passages taken from Viktor E. Frankl’s The Unconscious God: Psychotherapy and Theology (1975).
Viking Penguin Co. for the passage quoted from the 1970 edition of Abraham Maslow’s Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences (from The Further Reaches of Human Nature, copyright 1971 by Bertha G. Maslow).
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Chapter 1: Faith and Happiness
“Success and happiness must happen, and the less one cares for them, the more they can.” (Viktor Frankl, The Will to Meaning )
Everyone seeks happiness. So fundamental is this fact of existence that America’s founding fathers not only accepted this classical principle as “self-evident,” but even held “the pursuit of happiness” to be a basic human right. The idea that humans by nature seek happiness is at least as ancient as the philosopher Socrates who insisted that no one acts in any fashion unless he or she believes, rightly or wrongly, that what one does will bring happiness.
Often, of course, people have mistaken notions about what is good for them or will make them happy. Mere physical pleasure is often wrongly equated with happiness. But, as Aristotle pointed out, pleasure really is nothing but an indicator of what should be, but is not always, a source of happiness for us. As we soon discover, immediate pleasure can very often end up being a false indicator, or even a trap that destroys the really valuable things in life. Just as the attractions of certain foods and beverages, for example, can end up causing us to destroy the health that food and drink are meant to preserve, so too we also know that many really worthwhile goals in life can be reached only through the pain of great effort or through the cost of long periods of sometimes boring preparation.
So when we speak about human happiness we are not talking about the immediate gratification of our cravings for pleasure, or even about the avoidance of unnecessary pain. Many of our pains are, to be sure, unnecessary. But many of our postponed pleasures and for the immature, such postponement is often only seen as pain) as well as our hardships
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are for the sake of a much greater and more lasting happiness — something that we nowadays are apt to call “fulfillment.”
But the meaning of “fulfillment” is not self-evident either. For some, fulfillment means cramming in all the pleasures and experiences one possibly can into a lifetime-and as quickly as possible, just in case one doesn’t live very long. For others, fulfillment seems to take the shape of living as long as possible, even if one deprives oneself of the possibility of accomplishing anything else in life.
Still, as we are all too well aware, life is limited. As the psalmist reminds us “our years are seventy, or if we are strong, eighty” (Ps 90). Today, now that this biblical lifespan has almost become a fact, not just for the lucky few who once made it to