UvA economist Marco van der Leij left science to devote his life to God
For years Marco van der Leij wrote publications in top scientific journals. Until he embarked on “a spiritual voyage of discovery”. A year and a half ago he exchanged the UvA for Brussels to train as a priest in the Catholic Church. “I thought about it for a very long time. Is this what God wants from me?”
Marco van der Leij (44) comes down the granite stairs of his Brussels home at an even, unhurried pace. “That is one of the many things I learned from my novice master,” he says. “At the UvA, I was always used to running down the stairs to get to a lecture or a meeting on time.” His novice master, who happens to be walking by, smiles broadly: “We could always hear Marco coming down the stairs.”
It is now a year and a half since Van der Leij left the Amsterdam School of Economics for the noviciate: the training to become a brother in the Catholic Church. In the Brussels suburb of Ixelles he lives with four other brothers in a specially renovated apartment complex, opposite a large church. It is the next big step in what Van der Leij calls his “spiritual journey of discovery”.
Spiritual journey of discovery
That voyage of discovery begins in 2009 in Cambridge, where he works as an economics lecturer. After completing his dissertation and receiving appointments in Utrecht and Alicante (Spain) his contract with one of the most renowned universities seems to hold the prospect of a brilliant academic career. Although on paper everything seems to go smoothly for him, Van der Leij does not have that feeling. He speaks of “a difficult time” in which he struggles with “psychological problems”.
“I saw a book on Buddhism in Cambridge and – I still don”t really know why – I started reading it.” He doesn’t have high hopes for it at all, but he is searching. “I had expected it to be very vague, but it was actually very practical. The moral principles appealed to me; it was about doing good.” Van der Leij joins a meditation group. “That really was a revelation. I discovered an inner world I didn”t know yet.”
Attending the meditation group becomes a habit, “you start joining retreats, it’s like being in a student association, you roll into it more and more”. After a year in Cambridge Van der Leij returned to the Netherlands. Not much later he received an appointment to the University of Amsterdam, where he was to focus on complex financial networks.
Bible stand
“I started to open up more to religions, I noticed. When I was walking through town one Saturday, I saw a Bible stand there with some people. Normally I would have always walked past them, hoping they wouldn’t start a conversation, but now I was making conversation myself. Those people offered me a New Testament as a farewell.”
It is his first contact with Christianity. His father was originally a Christian, but no longer professes to be one; his mother was raised a non-believer. In Amsterdam he finds a house in the Bijlmer. On his way to his subway he walks past the building of a Pentecostal church every day. “One day I just went in during a service. It was overwhelming. There was singing, ‘God has forgiven you.’ I needed that at the time. My relationship had just broken up, and it was largely my fault. Those words made me incredibly emotional.”
Theory of evolution
In the end, the Pentecostal Church proved too radical. The denial of the theory of evolution is a bridge too far for Van der Leij. Instead, he goes to visit St. Nicholas Church opposite Central Station. At the same time, Van der Leij remains active in the Buddhist community. “I've never seen that as something exclusive. As an atheist my biggest objection to religions was that there were so many, and they all thought they had a monopoly on truth. Now I see that they are trying to articulate the same truth, but they all do it in their own way. Man is limited, we look for words to put the unspeakable into words.”
Alpha Course - The Alpha Course is a basic course on Christianity developed in the United Kingdom.
Congregation - A congregation is a monastic community that has joined a particular movement in Catholicism. Roughly up to 1550 one speaks of orders, movements that were founded after that are called congregations. Well-known orders or congregations are Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans.
Eucharist - Also known as “Holy Mass” or “Blessed Sacrament”, the Eucharist is a Catholic celebration revolving around the holy meal where Christians remember Jesus and believe he comes into their midst in the form of bread and wine.
Noviciate - The noviciate is a probationary period that Christians must go through before being accepted into a congregation or order.
Eucharistic Adoration - Eucharistic adoration is a mode of prayer that involves silent prayer focused on the Eucharistic host (i.e. the bread consecrated during Mass), but apart from Mass itself
In addition to his work at the Faculty of Economics & Business, Van der Leij starts spending more and more time on religion. When he decides to take a course, he feels he has to choose. “Both the Buddhist Life mindfulness practice and the Christian Alpha course in the Saint Nicholas Church had very loving people. For me that is also a confirmation of the core of my faith: God is love” He ultimately made the choice for a “rather banal reason”: the Saint Nicholas Church is much easier to travel to than the Buddhist group near Surinameplein.
In 2013, four years after beginning his spiritual journey, Van der Leij received baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist in St. Nicholas Church. With this he becomes a member of the Catholic Church. In the years that followed, he immersed himself more and more in Catholicism. In addition to St. Nicolas Church, he began to visit the Begijnhof Chapel in the center of Amsterdam, where he met the Congregation of the Blssed Sacrament.
Pilgrimage
He even went on a pilgrimage to Assisi, Italy. “There I thought: I must follow St. Francis’ example, I must become a priest and perhaps, just like him, literally give my cloak to a beggar. But then a week later, when you're back on Roeterseiland and confronted with the activities of every day, that thought is much less present. It came in waves.”
The time Van der Leij spends on faith does make it increasingly difficult to compete at the absolute scientific top. “If you really want to do what all those referees of journals want, you just have to put a lot of time into that. I used to be so dedicated to my work that I did that too. But I didn't want to make that time for it anymore. As a result, I no longer succeeded in bringing in those top publications.”
So many good economists
There hasn’t really been a single moment of decision. “I thought about it for a very long time. Is this what God wants from me? Where are my talents best displayed? What is my calling?” His spiritual journey of discovery changed his view of what is good and useful. “Yes, the optimal allocation of economic resources is important for society. But there are so many good economists in the world. There is a great shortage of good young people in the church. If people can experience God, it helps them and society tremendously.”
Pater is the Dutch word for a Catholic priest who is a member of an order or congregation. Only unmarried men can become paters. Those who wish to do so will first have to become full members of the Catholic Church. This is done by receiving the sacraments of Christian initiation: baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist.
Then you have to complete the noviciate of an order or congregation. The novitiate is a kind of probationary period of one or two years which ends with taking temporary religious vows, after which you are admitted as a brother.
The noviciate is followed by priestly training at a seminary or university. This training usually consists of studies in philosophy and theology and pastoral internships, and usually lasts about six years. During the training you take an perpetual religious vows , and are ordained a deacon. Finally, you receive priestly ordination. As a priest with an order or congregation, you are then a pater.
Van der Leij chose the noviciate, and thus the spiritual path. “I am now a pupil again, and soon a student.” He feels the desire to become a priest, but also does not rule out returning to science one day. “When I read theological texts here in the library, research ideas still come up sometimes. I am also still in touch with an experimental economist, with whom I am good friends. The other day we discussed whether it is possible for game theory to take into account rational choices in the formation of beliefs. Game theorists assume that in uncertain situations people make a probability distribution about the course of the game, the so-called beliefs, based on what they have observed in the game so far. In many game situations, however, it is not possible to determine the beliefs unambiguously from the observations, and game theorists are left in the dark. But what if people choose their beliefs in such a way that it leads to the best outcome for them?”
In his view science and religion can go together just fine. “In the Pentecostal Church it was seen as a conflict, and if you take the Bible very literally there is also a conflict. If you interpret the texts very narrowly, as the Catholic Church did in the Middle Ages, there is a conflict. I used to see faith as unscientific and useless, but I have found that faith has actually made me a better and more loving person.”
“Science for me is about what we can see and what we can observe and what we can infer from that. But as a scientist, and certainly as an economist, I understand that we know very little really. What do you do with the part you don't know? That’s hard to put into human words, and that's where religion can help.”
A loss
When he announced his departure in Amsterdam, he did not receive any negative reactions from his former colleagues at the university either. “My professor did consider my departure a loss to science, but otherwise many people thought it was a courageous step.”
When Van der Leij walks through the house on the Waversesteenweg, and pays attention to his pace, he sometimes misses his colleagues. “Working in teams, working together on big problems, I've always liked that. Here, life, especially as a novice, is a lot more individual. I see my brothers at the Eucharist, during prayer, and at meals. Outside of that, everyone is pretty much on their own.”
This also has to do with the congregation Van der Leij chose, that of the Blessed Sacrament. In that congregation there is a lot of time for Eucharistic adoration. In this, the faithful pray in silence before the Eucharist. “One time I thought: I am sitting here for an hour in silence praying in front of a piece of bread. That thought led to a kind of spiritual short circuit in my head: the realization that the body of Christ, that the whole universe is in there. Somehow I love that idea.”
