The Plant and the Pot

When a plant or seedling is first put into a pot of soil, the seedling is nurtured and protected. This is necessary. Yet the pot will define how large the plant can grow. At some point the pot becomes too small, too narrow, too shallow for a plant that wants to keep growing. If the plant is not moved to a larger venue, it will become stifled, will not become all that it is meant to become.

The catechism, and a set theology, dogma, that is precisely defined is like a pot. A child or someone new to the faith is planted in it. This is good. The person needs to be nurtured, to have some sense of the whatness of the faith. An inquiring, expanding mind however will continue to grow. The catechism and the precisely defined body of doctrine may not be able to contain such a person who is growing in their faith. Tradition prefers to act like a pot with a ability to nourish within a set boundary. But it is always a boundary. The relationship between God and creature cannot be confined.

Things become even more complicated when we try and take our western pot and place all of Asia into it. Even the Asian bishops are saying we have to come up with something new. It is not the soil that is the problem. It is the pot.