Have a Safe Flight!
CH-47D Chinook training mission, Fort Rucker, AL 1990.
I discovered recently some forgotten pictures of my time flying helicopters in the Unites States Army. It brought to mind all sorts of memories, particularly, the first day of flight training. After climbing into the pilot’s seat the first time, I remembered thinking, “I shall never learn how to do this!” Probably, everyone has a similar thought about such things. My flight instructor said, “Trust the instruments, and you’ll make it home.” I would come to discover the wisdom of that advice the first time I encountered vertigo. My body told me the aircraft was turning left, when indeed it was flying level. I instinctively pushed the cyclic stick right to bring the aircraft to level flight. My co-pilot shouted his objection, “Are you trying to kill us!” When I reported the problem, he said, “Take a look at the instruments; they show level flight.” I couldn’t understand it, I had a strong feeling that the aircraft was in trouble. My co-pilot took control, and I put my head down between my knees (it was the procedure for such an experience). After a few minutes, the vertigo sensation left, and I could see the instruments had, indeed, given accurate readings.
The same thing can happen in our faith. We sometimes get the “feeling” that something is wrong, and we need to make a change. Maybe we have come to disagree with a particular teaching of the Church, and we feel like we need to seek out a different Christian experience that more closely aligns with the way we are feeling at the time. Saint John Henry Newman experienced a similar dilemma. In his discourse on “Faith and Private Judgment,” the Saint observes that the Catholic Church is the “living authority” which maintains from the Apostolic time. He also observes that we tend to interpret for ourselves matters of faith. He writes, “Are not these two procedures distinct in this, that in the former (living authority) you submit, in the latter (your private interpretations) you judge for yourselves?” (Italics added for comparison). If you permit me, the “living authority” about which Newman writes can be viewed as flight instruments. They are calibrated and fixed by the authority and expertise of the maintenance folks. The “private judgement” is, on the other hand, the ‘feeling’ one gets in various situations. Responding to one necessarily rejects the other. Had I continued to respond to the ‘feeling’ I had caused by vertigo, I might not be writing this now. Fortunately, my co-pilot reminded me to “Trust the instruments.”
What are the ‘instruments’ of the Catholic faith? The Church will call them “precepts.” These are general rules established by the living authority of the Catholic Church as a “guarantee to the faithful the very necessary minimum in the spirit of prayer and moral effort, in the growth of love of God and neighbor” (CCC 2041). To paraphrase my flight instructor, “Trust the precepts, and you’ll make it home.” And, just as a reminder, Heaven is our HOME! May we all have a safe flight.
1LT (First Lieutenant) Watts stationed in West Germany, 1987.