A TIMELY ASSESSMENT OF TWO POPES

March 13 was the 10th anniversary of the pontificate of Pope Francis, and since Emeritus Pope Benedict passed away just a few months ago (December 31), it seems like a good time to reflect on what they achieved.

    Pope Francis has made it a hallmark of his reign to lead by example, walking his talk as a living embodiment of the church’s preferential option for the poor and marginalized. One of his first actions was humbly washing the feet of prisoners in a jail. He also has taken refugees into the Vatican and welcomed LGBTQ+ people.

    He has extended this sensitivity to women by promoting them to key positions in the Vatican, and seriously considering the “sensus fidei,” (sense of the faithful), that God speaks through lay people as well as the ordained hierarchy. He has called for several synods where the 99% of the church who form the laity can speak their minds freely.

    He has emphasized the church as a pastoral organization rather than a dispenser of dogma, that is, its first calling is to be compassionate toward all those who suffer. His visit and apology to Canadian Indigenous who suffered from residential schools was his attempt to make amends for misguided church abuse.

    Francis has been committed to interreligious dialogue, particularly with Muslims, visiting Islamic leaders in their own countries to discuss how these two major religions can get along and work together for the benefit of all.

    His major encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home” represented the first attempt by a pope to integrate environmental concern into the theology of the church. Published just before the Paris Climate Accord in 2015, it had an impact on the deliberations there.

     A major achievement recently was developing a new constitution for the church, which reformed the Curia (church administration) by replacing Vatican congregations with “dicasteries,” that is, departments meant to help the pontiff govern the church by implementing changes instead of resisting them.

    However, it has not been all roses. Francis has been attacked as a “socialist pope” by several conservative bishops, who even suggested he should resign. And he has been criticized by the left due to their disappointment he has not ordained women as clergy.

    Except for two notes, I won’t say much about the legacy of Pope Benedict (2005-2013) since so much has already been written by others. His reign was not nearly as substantial as that of Francis, and I agree with some that the best thing he did was step down when being pope became overwhelming.

    However, on a positive note, it amazes me that everything I have read has missed Benedict’s greatest achievement, the development of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Before he became pope, Cardinal Ratzinger chaired a commission of 12 cardinals assisted by seven diocesan bishops as well as experts in theology.

    The Catechism is a synthesis of the essential contents of Catholic doctrine on faith and morals in light of the Second Vatican Council and two thousand years of church tradition. Its main sources are sacred scripture, the liturgy, writings of the saints, and the church’s “magisterium” (teaching office). A first draft was sent out to all the world’s Catholic bishops who made thousands of suggestions, all of which were incorporated in the final draft promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1992. This was the first major catechism in over 400 years and will be a model for all local catechisms for the foreseeable future. Reminiscing about this, Pope Benedict stated in 2011 that it seemed like a miracle they were able to pull all this together into a contemporary catechism.

    However, all was not roses in this case either. The Catechism became very popular among lay Catholics, some of whom weaponized it in the way some Protestants have weaponized the Bible. In other words, it has been used to shut down debate, mature reflection, and interpretation, instead of facilitating it. I have heard Catholics say, “The Catechism says it, and so I believe it.” End of discussion.

    It has been extensively studied in parishes, but it should be read along with books such as Adult Faith by Diarmuid O’Murchu. Otherwise, lay Catholics run the danger of being trapped in an adolescent faith that thinks it has all the answers. Still, the Catechism is a masterpiece of Christian thought, and Benedict deserves full credit for it.

HOW TO HARNESS YOUR MIDLIFE CRISIS

  In early childhood we are who we are in a straightforward, direct way. We love and trust life and other people spontaneously. We are uninhibited, so nothing is held back or hidden.

    However, usually due to conditional love from our parents, we learn quickly that certain things we say or do will be rewarded, and other things will be ignored or punished. We learn to hide certain parts of ourselves in order to be loved by others.

    As we move through adolescence toward adulthood, we learn even more that we must repress parts of ourselves in order to be tough and competitive and stand on our own two feet in the world. Our ego must become strong so we can survive.

    In childhood and adolescence, the repressed parts of ourselves get buried in our subconscious mind. However, in mid-life, which can extend anywhere from thirty-five to sixty-five years of age, we have less energy to hold all this subconscious material down.     

    Weighed down with mortgages, jobs, parenting, and other responsibilities, and aware that we may not live a lot longer, often in mid-life we suddenly feel an urge to rediscover the freedom and spontaneity of our inner child or inner adolescent. Our subconscious, repressed parts start to emerge in our dreams, daydreams, fantasies, or in a general sense of restlessness or meaninglessness. We might have a powerful urge to write poetry, start a rock band, buy a hot car or motorcycle, party all night, have an affair, quit our job, or leave our marriage.  

    At this point, according to the great twentieth century psychologist Carl Jung, we have three basic options. The first one is to keep soldiering on, keep repressing all these seemingly irrational urges that are coming up, keep cutting off essential parts of ourselves. We may end up with an ulcer, stroke, or heart attack, or become cynical, bitter, and slowly die spiritually.

    Or, at the other extreme, we can let the subconscious urges flood us all at once, so we are overwhelmed and become a mid-life crazy person who throws out all we have worked so hard to build, irresponsibly destroying our marriage, family, and career in the process.

    The third option is to allow the subconscious, repressed parts to have a voice, listen to them, and let them into the conscious mind a little at a time so that we are in control of the urges rather than the urges controlling us. We can look at our urges and decide rationally which would be wise and which would be foolish to act on. This is the healthiest option, to slowly integrate the repressed parts of ourself back into our life without destroying what we have built so far.

    Jung called this third option “individuation.” It is our true self calling us to let go of our ego, to integrate our conscious and subconscious minds, so that we become a whole person again.

    In this third option, we reach “second naivete,” that is, we let our inner child play through us in a mature way. Letting our inner child out may seem foolish to the person who has become cynical and bitter, just as continuing to be responsible may seem foolish to the person who has chosen irresponsibility.

    We are not called to become immature, that is, childish, but rather to become directly loving and trusting once again, that is, childlike, but in an adult way. Life has taught us some hard lessons, but we make love and trust our greatest priority again, without letting our guard down absolutely, as a child does. According to Jung, this is the essential work that needs to be done in mid-life.

 

 

 

 

LOVE’S PROPER DISTRIBUTION

 

The Resurrection is about the Cosmic Christ

but the historical Jesus is both

a historical door to God and an Ultimate Door.

Jesus shows us how to open the door to God’s Providence

working in every moment – whether we receive honor or contempt –

to the devout both are useful for edification.

 

Matthew is the only gospel that uses Final Judgement

as a way of dramatizing the teachings of Jesus –

no other gospel has the teaching of the sheep –

eternally blessed for reaching out to the poor –

and the goats – damned forever for shutting the poor out.

Still, justice-seeking is constitutive of every gospel –

justice is never an add-on/afterthought.

 

Discipleship involves both putting on

the Mind of Christ and working to spread

the Beloved Community/Church/Kindom of God

in the world – to be people of prayer

and to humanize our impersonal society.

 

“Lovers in a Dangerous Time”

by Canadian folk legend Bruce Cockburn (Co-burn)

is a prophetic song in naming our times

as dark and death-dealing

and naming love as the only way

to “kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.”

 

Justice needs to be fueled by love and prayer

for our enemies, otherwise, as Gandhi said

“you replace one pack of wolves with your own pack.”

Justice needs its Source

in the inexhaustible energy of God

or it will burn out in anger/frustration/exhaustion –

you need a strong spiritual life to confront the powers that be

and to be a well-balanced/effective justice-warrior.

 

So, Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God”

can be used to draw yourself

and your comrades/compatriots/conspirators

into a contemplative state of mind

and fight with renewed energy for the justice of God

which is “the proper distribution of love

throughout society” – Reinhold Niebuhr

CAST YOUR NETS INTO THE DEEP

The growing gap between theology and science

for five centuries meant religion got relegated

to the backburner of fixed abstract concepts

which couldn’t cope with a universe of dynamic change –

Isaac Newton believed God’s living commands

would be replaced by mathematical laws

and Darwin’s theory of universal evolution

destroyed the immutable world of religion.

 

We either accept our fixed views/beliefs/assumptions

about reality, or we challenge them –

to remain open and curious, according to Buddha

is the best use of our lives.

 

 Evolution entails a continuous revolution

in consciousness that eventually expresses itself

in deeper religious understanding –

most Christians today are rethinking Augustine

who gave way too much weight to one verse:

“I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin

did my mother conceive me” Psalm 51:5.

The idea we all are sinners

right from the moment of conception

gave birth to the prevailing paradigm of Original Sin

and convenient communal amnesia about the verse

that God originally created everything

including us humans “very good” (Psalm 1:31).

Religious ideas in western Christianity

are now in flux/diverse/non-dogmatic

even in religious America only .05% believe

they or their neighbours will go to hell

and 70% believe many religions lead to eternal life –

contemporary atheists now seem to know more

about traditional Christian beliefs

than most Catholics and Protestants!

 

The request of Peter by Jesus

to cast his nets into the deep

was a symbolic invitation to us to go deep into our souls

and haul up a treasure of self-knowledge –

that, and communal remembering

and becoming mystics as Karl Rahner advocated

are the only ways we will make Christianity work again.

HEAVEN/HERE/NOW

By reversing the relationship between being and union

Teilhard de Chardin overturned classical metaphysics

and introduced a new principle of reality – hyperphysics –

being comes out of union not vice versa –

the whole/community precedes the individual.

 

According to the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich

communal non-being threatens humanity in three ways:

  1. our ontic self-affirmation is threatened:

relatively by ‘fate’ (contingent/circumstantial/existence)

absolutely by death

  1. our spiritual self-affirmation is threatened:

relatively by emptiness

absolutely by meaninglessness

  1. our moral self-affirmation is threatened:

relatively by guilt

absolutely by condemnation.

 

And according to Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond

we cannot discover our True Self

until we overcome the four splits of the False Self:

  1. our idealized self split from our shadow self
  2. our mind split from our body
  3. our life split from our death
  4. our self split from others.

 

But Christ unites all/overcomes all non-being/splits

makes invisible visible/incomprehensible comprehensible –

God became human so that Christ may be first

not only in the spiritual realm

but also in the material realm.

 

If we could trust that “Your name is already written

in heaven” as Jesus said, it would immediately resolve

our most basic anxiety – that we are not good enough –

and would make all competing/criticizing/conquering unnecessary –

we would no longer suffer condemnation by ourselves/others/God.

 

Material things cannot dwell in each other

but spiritual things can: God/humans/all angels

dwell in each other in all joy and happiness

though we discern it not – unless we wake up to hyperphysics

and discover heaven/here/now.

 

THE NONDUAL BEDROCK OF RELIGION

The modern/postmodern/secular world is often struck

by its own power, and raises anxious questions

about humanity’s meaning/role/destiny in the universe

so, Christianity needs to bring its own vast resources

to bear on these questions.

 

If Christianity’s mission is to dialogue

with all people, it must begin

by creating mutual respect/harmony with all churches –

interdenominational infighting makes Christians

hypocrites when they try to reach out.

 

As a chaplain in World War II, John MacQuarrie

saw the basic goodness of soldiers

and grace operating in Muslims

which challenged his Calvinist negativity

about human nature’s “absolute depravity”

and led to his conversion from Presbyterian to Anglican

letting go of Calvin’s exclusivism, he found grace

everywhere, and became the stellar Anglican theologian.

 

Jesuits in Japan hung out with Zen monks

and readily participated in the quasi-religious

“Tea Ceremony” which looks from the outside

like a non-spiritual ritual, but internally

is about disciplined silence/simplicity/

self-effacement/contemplation.

 

There may not be a universal religion

but there is a universal wisdom

which Aldous Huxley wrote about in 1945

in The Perennial Philosophy – all religions

value virtues like patience/humility/kindness/

compassion/peace. Like John Henry Newman

who was a major influence in Vatican II

Huxley believed God’s Plan included all religions.

 

The fact that nondualism is central

to three major religions: Taoism/Hinduism/Buddhism

and underlay Christian mysticism for sixteen centuries –

Jesus said “You are in Me and I am in you

and we are in God” – means nondualism

unites both Western and Eastern religion.

 

BEWARE THE CHEESE MONKS!

Modern values focus on individualism

postmodern values focus on relativism

and often both result in nihilism and meaninglessness.

We all have limitless wealth –

the whole Creation is given to us by God

but we get so caught up in individualistic or relativistic

competition/defeat/victory

that we no longer see

what is right in front of us.

 

A competitive society is violent

so the apparent passivity Jesus preached

in the Sermon on the Mount –

turn the other cheek – seems absurd

but is actually subversive resistance

which forces perpetrators to face

their own violence.

 

What Thomas Merton rejected in the “world”

was not wealth or ambition

but the world’s triviality –

its fads/advertising/masks of hypocrisy

which even his comrades he disparagingly called

the “cheese monks” got caught up in –

as if their true calling/purpose was to produce

excellent cheeses or liqueurs!

 

The Catholic Church got so off track

that sex scandals broke it –

one third of people raised Catholic

vacated the premises

and with the pandemic

another third departed.

 

If real transformation never happens for Christians

then for professional church staff

their work becomes just a career

and for lay people church becomes something

one just attends, an afterthought

instead of the living Body of Christ

which heals the “world” and its violence

by giving it profundity.

 

 

THE EROTIC UNIVERSE

In early Christianity, theology and prayer

were never divorced. Evagrius of Pontus (345-399 CE):

“The theologian is the one who prays

and the one who prays is a theologian.”

 

Later on, Thomas à Kempis wrote in The Imitation of Christ

“If you look at Creation, the Creator

withdraws his gaze from you.”

So, Christians have had an anti-Creation/

anti-body/anti-sexuality spirituality

which is ironically contrary to the Creation-centered

spirituality of the Bible.

 

But the theory of evolution changed all that –

evolution does not degrade humans

it shows us we are an integral part

of a vast web of earthly relationships.

But science only tells us ‘how’ we got here –

we need religion to tell us ‘why’ we are here – our purpose.

 

The idea of Christian cosmology

is in the Greek Fathers of the Church

particularly Irenaeus, who wrote that, in Christ,

the universe finds its meaning and goal.

 

The Uni-Verse, the One Verse, the One Poem

is thoroughly relational/communal/erotic –

wanting union even at the molecular level –

‘gravity’ is ‘mutual attraction between bodies’ – ‘eroticism’ –

its all part of the love that makes the Universe go round –

to ‘be’ is to ‘be with’ – the ‘we’ always precedes the ‘I’

just as the sexual union of a man and woman precedes children –

no one can say “I did it all on my own”

or “I did it my way – alone.”

 

Mantras are not words that mediate rational meaning –

they are vehicles that carry the spirit to one’s depths

and give us solitude to make us ‘uselessly present’ to God

which connects us to love in our depths

which connects us to others –

solitude is thus the erotic foundation

upon which community is built –

the purpose of life is the same as the purpose

of the Universe – to make love.

UNITY SURPASSING MODERNITY

The Perennial Philosophy highlighted

the “Great Nest of Being”

which was the universal worldview of humanity

until modernity reared its methuselah head.

 

Going beyond modernity

since the turn of the millennium has been

a growing awareness of commonality

between religions, and unity of all sciences –

a general visioning of all things as interrelated.

 

However major dualisms still persist:

heaven vs Earth/spirit vs body/human vs animal/

sacred vs secular – all these dualisms

which falsify life/nature/God

since God works thru both/and polarities

not either/or dualisms – God is in and beyond

the Earth/body/nature/culture/life.

 

Photosynthesis, one of the key factors in life

happened when chlorophyll molecules served everything

by capturing solar energy and converting it into

food and energy for others

3,000,000,000 years ago.

 

Nature serves us and Law serves us

and so our will delights in Law

but we cannot fulfill all laws

so the Cosmic Christ emerged from within the universe

as Jesus the Christ who lived under the Law

and experienced all our temptations/compulsions

in order to redeem/liberate us from the Law

with the Divine Love that goes beyond Law.

 

Following Jesus, Christian social action

finds God in politics/work/social programs –

anything that betters human life –

because Christ became human

and every human is another Christ

and we cannot let Christ live

in physical/spiritual squalor –

“As you do to the least, you do to Me”

– Jesus the Unitive Thinker in Matthew 25:40.

UNPOSSESSIVENESS

There is the historical Buddha, Guatama

and there is the living Buddha within us all

who, like the Image of God/Cosmic Christ within

transcends all space/time/concepts

and is constantly Present.

 

Saint Pope John Paul II wrote that Buddhism

is “negative atheism” but the Second Vatican Council

saw that “Buddhism recognizes the radical insufficiency

of this shifting world, and teaches a Way

to absolute freedom and supreme enlightenment

through our own efforts and higher assistance” –

presumably help from Bodhisattvas.

 

Buddhists practice detachment

but Meister Eckhart taught liberation

thru “unpossessiveness” –

detachment involves rejecting the world

but unpossessiveness makes us lighthearted

and free to follow God.

 

Even in our daily sufferings/frustration/pain

we can experience God’s action transforming us

if we are faithful to the Inner Calling

of the living Buddha/Image of God/Cosmic Christ.

 

Canadian poet/singer Leonard Cohen:

“There is a crack in everything –

that’s how the light gets in.”

Canadian folk legend/activist Bruce Cockburn:

“You have to kick at the darkness

till it bleeds daylight.”

You must fight to create the cracks

that let in the light.

 

But the 81 stanzas

of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

suggest the Way of Peace and Surrender

is always superior to the Way of Force.