Poor Norway: A reflection from a Catholic blogger in Norway

Respectful Reader:

As most everybody knows, little Norway was rocked to its core on Friday when 32-year old white nationalist Anders Behring Breivik implemented a plan he had been working on for months: first to blow up a government building in the heart of Oslo using the same mix of fertilizer and fuel Timothy McVeigh used in the Oklahoma bombing in 1995, and then head to a Labor Party summer camp for youth on an island west of Oslo to cold-bloodedly kill as many young people as possible. His intention was to injure the Labor Party – which he sees as responsible for all of Norway’s present-day ills – at its heart, and eliminate as many young recruits to the party as possible. At this writing the death toll is 76; the majority of victims are under the age of twenty-two, some as young as fourteen.

This posting will not add anything to the information that is blanketing the internet about Anders Breivik’s ideology and motivations, how the tragedy unfolded, who the victims are, how real the threat from the extremist right is. This posting is based on my observations as one with two feet physically planted in Norway but with a spirit that feels far removed from this beautiful country. Watching and listening to a completely secularized country deal with a tragedy of these dimensions brings forth great spiritual sorrow. A convicted Christian's instinct in the face of such tragedy, I believe, is to drop to one's knees – not necessarily in urgent prayer, but more from a sense of vulnerability due to the flash-bulb realization of how minuscule we are, how dependent we are on and thankful for something greater than ourselves, something larger and more powerful than our natural responses of confusion, fear and retribution. But in a country that has for more than a century intentionally and systematically purged its state church, its schools and its care-giving institutions of any true spirituality and faith, what is left is an astounding poverty of the spirit and an inability to invest suffering with greater meaning. The prime minister’s initial response to the tragedy on Utøya was that “more openness, more debate, more democracy” is needed to counteract this senseless act. King Harald, the head of the Lutheran State Church, has frequently been quoted saying: “Let us hold tightly to the belief that freedom is greater than fear.” The leader of the opposition stated that: “Now is the time to show that freedom and diversity are fundamental values we will fight for.” Ironically, the only state leader whose religious message made it to the popular media was Barack Obama, assuring the Norwegians that they are in the prayers of the American people.

Lakes of flowers dot Norway: on the dock out to the island of Utøya, outside of Parliament, in the plazas of most Norwegian cities, on the steps to the main entrances of the schools the victims attended. People are standing in long lines to sign the protocols of condolence. Words like solicitude and solidarity, democracy and freedom are often heard. It is difficult for me to understand what democracy has to do with this: Anders Breivik exercised his democratic rights as he espoused the poison – on Facebook and in hundreds of internet discussions over the last years – that led to the premature deaths of so many young people. Democracy entails a ruling majority and an oft-times large and unhappy minority. How can this be a solution or a goal to light the way in the inevitable grief and confusion ahead?

Norwegians are surely struggling with the big questions in the privacy of their chambers; but by not allowing – or not being capable of allowing – the longings of the spirit to be voiced in the public domain, people – especially the young – are deprived of discovering – or at least exploring – a spiritual solution to their vulnerability and fears. Democracy, diversity and solidarity leave everyone in dim and airless rooms. What are we left with when the urgent emotions prompting solidarity fade?

In an editorial in today's Bergens Tidende, journalist Frode Bjerkestrand, provoked by thoughtless reactions during the last days – disco music pumping out of nightclubs and gangs of teenagers going drinking 24-hours after the massacre, curious journalists asking inappropriate questions, silly messages being tweeted across Twitter – wrote: “In the darkest moments my irritation makes me suspect that there’s something wrong with us Norwegians, unused to catastrophes as we are, with an apparently limited vocabulary and a paltry ability to express ourselves. Norwegian doesn’t seem to be a language for the really big occasions.”

My response to this journalist is to assure him that there is nothing wrong with the Norwegian language; it has the capacity to house beautifully the necessary expressions for the big occasions. The problem is the state-perpetrated and perpetuated collective denial of the reality of the spirit – the reality of something beyond a purely earthly, material struggle. Until this dimension is acknowledged by those who have the power to determine the future of a people, there will always be this destructive, autistic dimension.

The sanest words I have read during the last days are words sent to me by Nick, an Italian affiliated with Communion and Liberation:

Cardinal Newman composed [this prayer] in the 19th century. He was an old man when he wrote it and the first three lines evoke a life that the victims were deprived of, but the rest shows it is meant for all.

May He support us all the day long,

till the shades lengthen and the evening comes,

and the busy world is hushed.

And the fever of life is over.

And our work is done.

Then in His mercy may he give us a safe lodging

And a holy rest and peace at the last.