The Independent News Source
NCR on Kindle - NCR classifieds - YouTube - Twitter - Facebook - Email Alerts - RSS
Printer-friendly version
PDF versionAssisi III
by Michael Sean Winters on Oct. 28, 2011
In an otherwise balanced article in this morning’s Washington Post, Michelle Boorstein writes, “and Pope Benedict XVI has stressed the sole truth of Catholicism over other faiths, even declining this month to pray with Hindus, Jews and others at an interreligious [sic] event.” That’s not quite right.
It is true that when Pope John Paul II held the first inter-religious encounter at Assisi 25 years ago, part of the program included a “common prayer” to which many conservatives took umbrage. I did not. John Paul II, always aware of the drama of events, was willing to set aside any theological concerns about “communicatio in sacris” in order to send a powerful visual message: Whatever our differences, we religious leaders seek peace and brotherhood. John Paul II had a second inter-religious meeting in 2002 at Assisi which, in the wake of 9/11, was especially poignant.
But, I also do not object to the program Pope Benedict devised and think it a mischaracterization to say he was “declining to pray with” other, non-Catholic and non-Christian leaders. After a period of dialogue and what was billed, appropriately in Assisi, a “frugal lunch,” the different religious leaders went off to pray and meditate for 90 minutes on their own. Perhaps this decision flowed from concerns about relativism or syncretism, but I suspect it was of a piece with Pope Benedict’s consistent theme – faith, prayer, worship, these things are not about us, they are about God. All the great religious traditions provide some manner of private prayer with the God whom they worship. Benedict seemed to be saying: Let us pursue that avenue rather than come together in one space and hear the kind of lowest common denominator prayers that are habitually employed at such inter-religious occasions.
I see this decision to organize the event without a “common prayer” as akin to Pope Benedict’s attempts to put renewed emphasis on Christ in the liturgy. The most striking example of this is the practice he has introduced at papal Masses at which communicants now come forward and kneel before the Pope to receive communion. In the event, I don’t think this latter practice has the intended effect. If you have been to one of these papal Masses, or if the camera pans out to a wide angle view, it is clear that whatever piety is achieved at the main altar, in the piazza beyond, people are climbing over each other to get to the barricades along side of which priests are distributing communion into the outstretched hands of people who are standing. The message conveyed is that while you have to kneel to get communion from the Pope, the Body of Christ is somehow less worthy of reverence if delivered by anyone else, the exact opposite message of the one Benedict intends.
Subscribe to NCR
Want to read more about important issues in the life of the Church? A subscription to NCR will keep you up to date and informed.
There is a still wider theological framework for Pope Benedict’s decision to arrange the Assisi meeting around private prayer rather than common prayer. Broadly speaking, there have been three singularly powerful influences on Catholic theology in the last hundred or so years: the development of higher criticism regarding the Scriptures; the ressourcement theology that seeks to recapture some of the wonderment at the profundity of the Christian claim evidenced in the writings of the Fathers of the Church; and the “turn to the subject.” For purposes of this discussion, it is the last two that matter and they are clearly in a kind of tension. I do not want to put words in the mouth of the Holy Father, but I think he might agree that the “turn to the subject,” important though it is, may have turned a bit too far, that for too many – on both the left and the right – religion has become too much about us and not enough about God. (I dare say he is right in this.) Benedict, both as Pope and before that as Prefect of the CDF and before that as a theologian, has been concerned to get the focus of religion off of us and back onto God, as the ressourcement theology sought to do.
Let us come at this from another angle, one especially useful for examining Assisi II. In the 1960’s a theologians wrote (and I paraphrase as I can’t seem to find my copy of the work this morning), “Polytheism was half-right. It understood that God was immanent in the world. But, it missed the fact that God also transcends the world.” The theologian? Joseph Ratzinger of course. If one of the reasons to gather religious leaders of different faiths together was to focus on the first half, the part polytheists got right, that is well and good. But, for Benedict, we cannot neglect the other half, nor the fact that we Catholic Christians do not pray to the same God as our polytheist brothers. The God to whom we Catholic Christians pray is the Trinitarian God who is uniquely revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. I am told by theological insiders that while Ratzinger has always had great respect for Karl Rahner, the latter’s theory about “anonymous Christians” scared the livin’ bejeezus about of Ratzinger. I share the fear. I do not think our Church – or our world – suffers from too much watering down of the centrality or the uniqueness of the dogmatic claims at the heart of our faith.
Does this uniqueness mean we have no business dining with, or praying alongside if not exactly “praying with” people of other faiths? Of course not. But, all religions are not the same and there is something profoundly disrespectful, both to others and to ourselves, to suggest that all religions are really all the same so that it doesn’t really matter to which religion a person belongs. My problem with Rahner’s anonymous Christians theory was that in order to avoid disrespecting people of other faiths by saying “you are wrong,” his theory seems even more disrespectful, suggesting that these people of other faiths are, at least, not very bright because they are not wrong, they are right, they just don’t know it. I would rather be wrong than clueless.
My philosophy teacher at Catholic University, the great Paul Weiss, was not a theist. Yet, so committed was he to the fundamental questions of humankind, he wrote a book of theology called, “The God We Seek.” (This book, too, I do not have at hand and it is not buried under other books. I lent it to someone and can’t remember who!) To paraphrase, Weiss wrote, “Whomever God is, He is not less that the sum total of our various approaches to Him.” Not a bad insight for an atheist. But, of course, this God is a philosopher’s God, not the Christian God. Our God is not a “sum total” of anything. Our God was once a clot of blood in the womb of the Virgin.
The other outstanding aspect of Assisi II as conceived by Benedict was the decision to invite atheists to the event. Benedict’s commitment to ressourcement theology and the uniqueness of the Christian claim has not turned him into a parochial thinker by any means. His focus on God has not made him unalert to the importance of humanity or of humanism. The decision to include non-believers is, to my mind, just a stunning an affirmation of our common humanity as was the “common prayer” at Assisi I twenty-five years ago.
If you have not read the Pope’s remarks at Assisi, they can be found here. They are important, especially his closing section in which he said of those who are agnostic, “they also challenge the followers of religions not to consider God as their own property, as if he belonged to them, in such a way that they feel vindicated in using force against others.” Pope Benedict is no uncritical, triumphalistic thinker and his invitation to all religions to constantly purify themselves is refreshing and even urgent at a time when, stateside, a handful of bishops think they are above the law, even above their own laws! Reading Pope Benedict’s remarks at Assisi, I could not help thinking that we have on the throne of Peter exactly the man, and the mind and the heart, we need.
"Pope Benedict is no
"Pope Benedict is no uncritical, triumphalistic thinker and his invitation to all religions to constantly purify themselves is refreshing and even urgent at a time when, stateside, a handful of bishops think they are above the law, even above their own laws! Reading Pope Benedict’s remarks at Assisi, I could not help thinking that we have on the throne of Peter exactly the man, and the mind and the heart, we need."
This is a more than a bit disingenuous.
And exactly what has the pope done to hold these "handful of bishops" accountable? NOTHING! He is absolutely NOT the man the church needs. The church needs someone who TRULY understands the difference between right and wrong in REAL life, rather than someone who is so far "above" it all in his ivory tower cloud of academic theology that he doesn't understand the horror done and the worst kinds of sins committed by those under his supervision.
As you well know, the sexual abuse of children by priests occurred in many countries besides "stateside", and was hidden by many, many (not a "handful") bishops (occasionally the abuse was committed by bishops. It was hidden by virtually EVERY bishop who knew of priest/molesters in their diocese. After ten years of public exposure, the pope has still done NOTHING to hold bishops accountable for the past, nor the future.
There are policies that impact the teachers and the CYO coaches, and the deacons, but no policies that impact bishops who facilitate child abuse. Cardinal Law was whisked to Rome and given a very prestigious cathedral, and several important jobs. Several of his assistant bishops were given dioceses of their own (one of whom "renovated" his living quarters to the tune of $5 million or so). In other words, all of these men were rewarded for their loyalty to an institution - one whose youngest members they betrayed. Cardinal Hoyas was never corrected publicly for praising a bishop who protected a priest who had raped many young boys. What has the pope done to discipline Hoyas? NOTHING. But, when Cardinal Sodano trivialized the abuse scandal as "gossip" and was chastised by Cardinal Schonborn, it was Schonborn who was subsequently chastised by the Vatican, not Sodano. And, it was Sodano who was among the beneficiaries of very expensive "gifts" from Maciel at a time when John Paul II decided to quash the investigation into Maciel.
If you have forgotten these unpleasant details, you can refresh your memory at bishopaccountability.org.
This church needs a man of honesty and moral courage, one who remembers what Jesus's life and message taught us, not a man who is so caught up in theological esoterica that he doesn't have the moral understanding of the average 7 year old.
The pope claims that his hands are tied - yet he quickly forced Bishop Morris to resign when the good bishop suggested that the church reexamine its teachings on women's ordination.
As a mother, I really don't care how brilliant a theologian Ratzinger is - all the esoteric, academic theology in the world is meaningless if the man at the top has no understanding at all of how his attitude and that of his predecessor aided and abetted the worst kind of crimes against children. And obviously the bishops are still not concerned - Philadelphia and Kansas City being the most recent examples. They know that their careers will not only not be damaged, if it gets too hot in the kitchen, they may end up in Rome with a plush new assignment, just like Law received.
God's time is much different
God's time is much different from Human time. The Spirit is moving.
We each meet God on our own,
We each meet God on our own, even when we do it in church - whether it is The Church or in another faith setting. Flapping our gums in unison is more theater than prayer, which takes place in the heart. God does not reach out to us or have us reach out because it benefits God, but because it is entirely for our benefit. Any theological construct that thinks otherwise is a repeat of the sin of Lucifer, who thought his faith expression must be more pleasing to God than any incarnate God-Man, especially a God-Man who functioned in this world as wholly human rather than as some kind of superman.
The popes words "challenge
The popes words "challenge the followers of religions not to consider God as their own property, as if he belonged to them, in such a way that they feel vindicated in using force against others.”
Reading the rest of what is written above is seeing exactly that sense of God as property of the Catholic church: "we Catholic Christians do not pray to the same God as our polytheist brothers. The God to whom we Catholic Christians pray is the Trinitarian God who is uniquely revealed in the person of Jesus Christ." Perhaps the popes word are intended to challenge all but Catholics "not to consider God as their own property."
There are different kinds of force that can be used against others. One is in war, when bombs fall as they do now or when swords pierce flesh as they did in the past. Certainly all Christians who trace their roots to European societies know (or should) that we killed each other quite self-righteously in the past, in the name of the God we sought to worship in different ways. Now, there is another kind of force The Church and some other faiths seek to use to require others to live as the faith requires or give up legal rights otherwise available. It is the coercion and government sanctioned discrimination the Catholic Church and some religious groups seek to rename "religious freedom." It is a real danger to the rights of individuals to exercise their own conscience, and their rights of equality under the law. It allows some sort of institutional conscience , for us called Catholic identity, to become more important that individual rights (in the law) and individual conscience (before God).
I would be less afraid of this if there was any sense that what the Catholic people believed was paid attention to by the hierarchy of the Church - think birth control or gay marriage. But, that sense we have, millions of us - the majority of us-, that the official Church is just plain wrong and particularly wrong to try to make civil law conform to it, does not seem to be of interest nor does it cause any reflection on the part of the hierarchy. It is a hierarchy held to no accountability, one we have no voice in choosing, one who has no interest in understanding where we agree or disagree (pray, pay, obey), one we have no way of getting rid of when they misuse tens of millions of dollars or fail to protect children from pedophile priests. We are absolutely powerless; we have no voice up into the hierarchy, we have no face up into the hierarchy.
So we have a Catholic Bishop telling a congressional committee that a clerk who refused to issue a marriage license to a mixed race couple would be guilty of discrimination, but a clerk who refused to issue a marriage license to a gay couple would be exercising freedom of religion. I will again write letters to my representative and senators telling them that plain Catholic though I am, the Bishop does not represent my thinking or the thinking of the majority of Catholics and will cite surveys that show that the majority of Catholics support the right of gays to either marry or to have a legally recognized civil union. And, I will say as a Catholic I do cherish both religious freedom and the right to my individual conscience and do not want the Church to receive some sort of institutional right to dictate that I may not choose contraceptives because "The Church" disapproves.
"The most striking example of
"The most striking example of this is the practice he has introduced at papal Masses at which communicants now come forward and kneel before the Pope to receive communion. In the event, I don’t think this latter practice has the intended effect."
I think you have a point here, Mr. Winters. And the solution that would best achieve the Pope's objective would be a universal return to the ancient practice of reception of communion on the tongue, regardless of who the cleric is.
Post new comment