Other Musings via Disqus

You can keep your filibuster, if you want it.

[from Nuclear Option Watch (Update – BOOM!)]

Mark30339 | November 21, 2013 at 3:12 pm

So as we approach the anniversary of the public murder of an American President by a lover of the Soviet state, the Left publicly murders legislative comity, while their incompetent POTUS comedy plays on. Iron-fisted, single-party rule is being thrust upon us. The triumph of defeating soviet totalitarianism has morphed into American totalitarianism.
There is no silver lining, this is a devastatingly low point. While there has been precious little reaching across the aisle for many years, the memory and tradition of such comity was always present. Say good-bye to middle-ground and to common ground and to steady governance. The political pendulum will swing ever more widely and ever more rapidly — with Republicans and Democrats in perpetual savaging of each other.
The Left has given us this wasteland. General Sherman said that the South chose the remedy of war, and it was incumbent upon him to give it to them abundantly. The Left has released the Kraken of all-out acrimony, and I do not know how the Right can avoid responding in kind. The essential fabric of self-governance and acceptance of elected authorities has been torn apart this day. What will thrive next are factions of relentless INSURRECTION on both the Left and the Right. We can no longer hope in a cooperation for the common good. Government imposed order with increasing levels of brutality will fill the coming days. And the manipulation of elections with government resources will become so profound that no one will believe fair elections are even possible. Ben Franklin said the country had a republic, if they could keep it. If he is looking down on us now, he will more likely say: “Venezuela says hello!”

Christians and Nuclear Deterrent

Mark Tooley has an opinion piece on politically advocating for nations with the bomb to disarm.  Our mortal lives are precious, but the passage from Daniel testifies to surrendering our goods and even our bodies to remain in harmony with a divine creation that is ever more precious.  In the end, I cannot advocate for a government to abdicate defense and impose that policy on people who are not freely choosing to go all in on Jesus' way.

My comment:

Mark30339| 3.21.13 @ 2:20PM

I take no pride in assenting here. The article and comments certainly do hold logic, but should show more compassion for the unfortunate Japanese civilians who suffered horribly from deployment of our nuclear powers. Our material lives are of such a value that we wish to harbor destructive powers that presumably frighten and coerce potential invaders. Yet our Judeo-Christian tradition harkens back to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed'nego, who refused to be coerced by the the fearsome Nebuchadnez'zar. They "yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God." If we are both Christian and supportive of the nuclear deterent, let us at least acknowledge the embarrassment of being too feeble in faith to face our enemies with the same forgiving and weaponless grace that Jesus modeled for us.

chemman| 3.21.13 @ 6:22PM

You are mixing up what we as individuals are called to do in the face of our individual enemies with that which a nation is called to do. They are not necessarily the same.

Mark30339| 3.22.13 @ 6:20PM

Or rather, they are not necessarily different things. I cannot advocate for our government to unilaterally disarm because that kind of faith leap can't be imposed on a population by decree. But it embarrasses me that we enjoy our peace and security because we are willing to rain down nuclear annihilation on other populations. Note that the citizenry of Poland was counseled to resist and confront non-violently. It was not just a coincidence that the US was applying pressures on the Soviets without provoking armed conflict. Reagan and John Paul II (and especially their staffs) were in constant coordination in this non-violent confrontation. See The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism by Paul Kengor (Sep 18, 2007) and its related youtube speech at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqjQadIE954.

Conservatives Running the Church

A Pope Away From a Perfect Church is an article in today's American Spectator and it implicitly exalts "conservative" views on policy and leadership by dismissing liberal views as "being without life" and running a victory lap just to rub dissenter noses in their superiority.  I do not know what good we do for the body of Christ by drawing conservative vs. liberal battle lines.  I do not endorse the current trend of bending theological principles to advance political policies now in vogue -- but please don't call me a conservative because of it.  I am open to the notion of ordaining women as deacons because there is sound scriptural precedent for it -- but please don't call me liberal because of it.  My comment to the article follows.

Nathan has a point.  Those who see themselves as conservative seem to delude themselves as a group holding a monopoly on virtue and sound leadership.  A large portion of "conservatives" are those who place themselves front and center at Our Lady of Authority Worship; they parrot the policy laid out by those in authority, they heap praise and fealty on the Pope and his minions, they rush to minimize and distort the horrors committed under the watch of those in authority, and they fiercely attack those who seek improvement in Church leadership.
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I am impressed with the skillful challenge Cardinal Dolan has pursued on Obamacare regulations -- yet I am shocked at how much tedium and minutia is offered up at meetings of the USCCB.  I am intrigued at Benedict's postures toward improved relations with Eastern Orthodox, but his lording over us with "consubstantial with the Father" and other quibbles with the English Mass is demeaning.
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It puzzles me that special overseers need to be appointed to compel reforms for our nuns when no such overseers were necessary for Legionnairies for Christ, Opus Dei, or dioceses riddled with scandal or bankruptcy.  It also puzzles me that males in authority refuse to acknowledge their own scriptures and at least give females a seat at the table among those ordained as deacons.  I hardly think that the abuse scandal would have been covered up so well and so long if we had a contingent of deacons who were also mothers.
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And the unyielding policy of refusing communion to those who are remarried seems harsh and callously detrimental to the children raised by such persons.  Let us find another sanction, and let us find a way to deploy the sacrament of reconciliation to restore these people to some level of communion with the Church.
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And finally, when does the leadership aggressively reverse our Church postures of comforting the comfortable and neglecting the afflicted?  A small minority quietly perseveres in mission work, while the priorities remain expanded luxuries at our churches and maintaining  Catholic schools that only the rich can afford.
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So now I suppose the conservatives will advocate that people like me need to be silenced and relegated to some kind of re-education program to get our minds and our Faith right before facing the crushing judgment of the conservative church's grand and glorious God.

Cleansing

A commenter known as Normal_Guy (now CamoCoyote) offers up pregnancy due to rape as a justification for aborting the child.  He writes:

Being raped is offensive enough. Carrying the consequence to term is extending the offense. A woman cleans herself physically, symbolically and emotionally after she is raped. Aborting a pregnancy as a consequence of rape is more of the same. I find it difficult to believe there are people that would insist their daughter, sister, mother or wife should give birth to a baby resulting from being raped???

I believe the count is at 54 million unborn lives snuffed out legally since Rowe v Wade. How many were the comprehensive "cleansings" prescribed by the Normal_Guy? Pregnancy from rape is quite rare, let's over-estimate and say 50,000. Under Normal_Guy thinking, we justify an industry that performs at least 999 killings for every 1 rationalized cleansing. Put in other words, each of these rape victims are "cleansed" with the blood of 1000 children -- including the blood of her own child. And somehow we assume that post-19th century rape victims with-child fare better with their abortion option than enduring women in the same situation for the many centuries before. Because the society of this age has no concept of sharing pain and carrying the burden of victims communally, it multiplies the horror onto others. People think this cycle of violence is only found in war and terror; think again.  For the sake of approximately 50 thousand pregnancies from sexual assault, Americans have snuffed out 54 million innocent lives so far.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Comment to Evolution and Original Sin by Nathan O'Halloran, SJ

Nathan's summary of Teilhard's ponderings on original sin is very informative. It should be mentioned that in Teilhard's time (the early 20th century), his writings on theology were extensively muzzled by Church authorities. Pope Benedict is recognizing Teilhard's insights nearly a century late (better late than never). The Augustinian/Pauline notion of how Adam's single "gotcha" disobedience taints us all has never resonated with me -- it simplifies human creation with rigidly logical dualism. I do not reject the standard original sin doctrine, I sense it to be thoroughly incomplete.


Why not embrace Teilhard's notion that humanity was created with a profound potential for sin and separation from its Creator. "In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss . . . ." The building material for man, earthen clay, seems imbued with a great potential for darkness, although it certainly need not develop in a dark way.

Adam and Eve, the prototype original humans, were persuaded to indulge a yearning to be like gods themselves and so they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and bad, their eyes were opened, and suddenly they became so self-conscious and self-absorbed that they perceived a shame in their nakedness. An ego-centered, comparing mind that sees everything as good or bad, better or worse, worthy of envy or worthy of disdain, takes root in mankind. Life is no longer perceived as a unified harmony, and becomes something commenced in pain, lived in toil and surrendered in death and bodily decay. Adam and Eve's legacy is that each succeeding generation embraces life in this fallen way -- it is taught and reinforced by example, again and again and again. We quickly forget and abandon the unified harmony that enveloped us in utero and in infancy.

Part of the Good News is that this fallen way can be unlearned, and part of the notion of being born again is learning to perceive God's unified harmony and learning to keep the judging ego in check. Our Lord provides a great gift with his Parable of the Prodigal Son. It seems that until we descend and humbly surrender like the prodigal son, we tend to live like the prodigal's brother, in a hard-hearted delusion of virtue.

Teilhard led a life filled with great triumphs and great difficulties. It is interesting that the importance of his observations of conditions from a century ago have great relevance and recognition now.

Preserving a Post

The blog at aquinasandmore.com celebrates its criticism of prolific author Fr. Richard Rohr.  Their blog post here includes a broken link displayed as follows:

Denial of hell, dismissal of "the fetus", caricature of pro-lifers, caricature of people who go to confession (article now removed from Fr. Rohr's website)

I located the article on the wayback machine and have re-posted it below so readers can judge for themselves as to whether the "denial of hell . . ." label adheres to truth in advertising.

Radical Grace
July – September 2006

awakened and astonished — part i

by Richard Rohr, OFM

The corruption of the best is the worst.
—Latin proverb

These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their hearts aren’t in it . . . so I am going to step in and shock them awake, astonish them, and stand them on their ears.
—Isaiah 29:14, Eugene Peterson translation

A recent study on altruism is supposed to have shown that people affiliated with religion are statistically no less nor more loving than people who call themselves unbelievers. In fact, they are often more egocentric, and only a very small percentage is genuinely or heroically altruistic. If true, this is surely disappointing and humiliating for religion, although I must say that it largely matches my own observations. Some of the most naturally generous people I have ever known have been secularized Jews. And they don’t even believe in an afterlife system of reward and punishment! We really have to look at this.

I have often thought that Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Scheler were at least partially right in what they called ressentiment. They felt that people could not just be morally pressured or legally commanded to love and not to hate, or they would end up in a double bind of simultaneous promotion and resistance. Hating, after all, gives real focus to our ego structure, and loving first feels like loss and surrender of structure. Nietzsche and Scheler felt that believers might love now and then, but like sullen children, they would often do it with an underlying resentment for being forced to do it! They would have one foot on the accelerator of life and another on the brake, trying to perform and yet deeply resisting being commanded at the same time. (I think that is exactly what Paul is trying to point out when he teaches the utter insufficiency of the “the Law” to liberate us (Romans, chapters 2– 7). Information is not the same as transformation. Compliance is not the same as conversion, yet they both become the common substitutes.

I believe there is a deep dilemma and contradiction at the heart of institutional Christianity. Maybe it is even a necessary one. All I know is that it can only be resolved—by authentic inner experience, “prayer,” mysticism, or dare I call it, “spirituality.” I am convinced that religion, in its common cultural and external forms, largely protects the ego, especially the group ego, instead of transforming it. If people do not go beyond first level metaphors, rituals, and comprehension, most religions seem to end up with a God who is often angry, petulant, needy, jealous, and who will love us only if we are “worthy” and belonging to the correct group. We end up with the impossible scenario of a God who is “small,” and often less loving than the best people we know! This supposedly divine love is quite measured and conditional, and yet ironically demands from us a perfect and unconditional love. Such a salvation system will never work, unless we allow an utterly new dimension of love “to astonish us and stand us on our ears,” as Isaiah says above. Unless God is able and allowed to love us unconditionally, we will never know how to do the same.

Most people I know would never torture another human being under any conditions. Yet people believe in a god who not only tortures, but tortures for all eternity. That is bitter vengeance by anyone’s definition. Why would anyone want to be alone with such a testy and temperamental god? Why would anyone go on the great mystical journey into divine intimacy with such an unsafe lover? Why would anyone trust such a god to know how to love those who really need it? I personally know many people who are much more generous and imaginative than this god is. We have ended up being ourselves more loving, or at least trying to be, than the god we profess to believe! Such a religion is in deep trouble—at its core.

Most people I know can eventually forgive and forget. But not our god! God does not forgive until he or she gets some appropriate penance, reparations, and repayment. (Actually reaffirmed in common sacramental practice). This is supposedly needed by one who has nothing better to do than keep accounts and do a self centered cost analysis on everything. Sort of like Santa Claus, “making a list and checking it twice, going to find out who’s naughty or nice.” The Lord of this beautiful and self renewing cosmos ends up looking instead like an anal retentive banker or a brooding maiden aunt. It just doesn’t match the cosmic evidence. And it particularly does not match the evidence for those who have prayed—or experienced divine forgiveness.

Most of my Jewish and Christian friends are very tolerant and accepting of different races, cultures, and religions. They are willing to see good wherever good is to be seen. But not our god. Our god only likes “born again” Americans, and preferably morally successful and “normal” people, who hopefully attend my denominational service on the proper day. (This is easily the quickest growing form of religion in most countries today!). Even stingy little Richard Rohr ends up being much more caring, patient, generous, and merciful than Yahweh Sabaoth! How did we get to such absurdity? Especially, after Jesus spends most of his ministry affirming those who are wounded, unworthy, not successful, normal, or properly affiliated?

Perhaps you say, “But religion has always taught me that God is love!” Yes, religion “says the right words,” but this god we hear about is never allowed to be loving in the way that we have experienced it from even our middle range friends and lovers. I have experienced immense patience, tolerance, and mercy from many of my friends. They put up with my failures and idiosyncrasies, and eventually know that some of my patterns will never even change. They often accept me as I am, and learn to love me as I am— which eventually almost indirectly changes me! Every good parent knows that unmerited love creates love-in-return. Grace creates gracious people. But not our god! God, and the history of religion, seem to prefer mandates, coercion, blame, and shame to achieve some kind of supposed transformation. This is quite helpful for social order and control of the immature. I really understand that, but it is quite clear to me in the later years of my life, that God does not love me if I change, but God loves me so that I can change. That is an entirely different agenda.

It often seems that religion’s most common concern is to find out what God does not like, where God is not present, and who God does approve for hating and excluding. Perhaps we are seeking to legitimate our own need to exclude and hate and dominate? Why else would we like a God who succeeds by punishing and always dominates? We have been told in recent years that God does not like homosexuals, God is not present in mosques and synagogues, and God is not bothered at all by the direct and collateral damage of our necessary wars. Abortion killing is the only killing that is inherently bad because the fetus is “innocent life.” This “morality” will only work if we can dare to think of ourselves as innocent! If legal protection and moral response depends on us being innocent or worthy, “then who can be saved?” What makes the Good News good news is precisely that God loves and defends unworthy and non-innocent life! Otherwise, you and I have little hope. And we can easily justify capital punishment, torture, euthanasia, and even pre-emptive wars against the unworthy ones—which is exactly what we have done. We have become the small god we worshiped.

I think my central disappointment with much religion is that it is so stingy in its attitudes, and actually seems to prefer a stingy god. It loves tribalism and group think. It likes to convert others more than change itself. Religions are notorious for excluding, expelling, and excommunicating. It is almost their job description. We actually fear and condemn anything that appears to be a call to mercy beyond our boundary markers. Any universalism (“catholicity”) or inclusivity is deemed dangerous. It feels like abdication of sacred ground, for some reason. We always come up with our fear of others, our fear of contamination, our fear of losing some supposed great truth that we are protecting and living. What fragile people religion has often created.

Read Part II of “Awakened and Astonished,” by Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, published in the October/November/December edition of Radical Grace. The article was first published in its entirety as “My Problem With Religion” in the March/April 2006 edition of The Pastoral Review, © The Tablet Publishing Company Limited ISSN1748-362X, London, England.

Fr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan of the New Mexico province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM.

If you enjoyed what you read, please consider joining the growing community of CAC friends and supporters by making a financial contribution. In return, you will receive a year’s worth (four quarterly issues) of Radical Grace.

Radical Grace
October – December 2006

Awakened and Astonished—Part II

by Richard Rohr, OFM

Monotheism's great breakthrough was that its God was “Lord of all the earth.” This is its’ great truth: “One God who is Father of all, over all, through all, and within all” (Ephesians 4:6). Doesn’t monotheism necessarily prepare us for one pattern, one reality, one world—one love? Yet the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been—up to now—inclusive only at very small levels. (Catholic Eucharistic practice gives this away). The very people who defend the “Creator of all things” are the last ones who really defend that same creation! Sure, God created all things, but we only have to love and respect small parts of it, which just happens to be my part—“Our people” much more than “all people.” The ecologists, humanists, and some globalists end up being much more “monotheistic” in practice than most Christians I know.

As is usual, the Jewish prophets, and one that we do not usually present as a Jewish prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, were pointing us relentlessly toward an inclusive and allcompassionate God. They were the true monotheists, in all its implications. I personally believe that the common Christian insistence that Jesus is necessary for universal salvation is actually an unconscious recognition that Jesus is teaching a universal message and pointing history toward the good of all. The prophets were not tolerant of mere tribal religion or any small belonging systems, but intuited the universal glory and sovereignty of their Yahweh.

II Isaiah loves to speak of “the nations counting as nothingness and emptiness” (40:17), that “all of humanity” will see the glory of God” (40:5), and that “my house will be a house of prayer for all the peoples” (56:7), which is later quoted by Jesus. The light revealed to Israel is to be “the light to all the nations” (42:6) because their message offers illumination for everybody and not just for themselves. It has become apparent to me that particularity, personal election, is first for the sake of a heightened and condensed experience, but eventually it always moves toward a universal recognition that is deemed true for everybody. You have to experience specialness yourself before it can grow inside of you, and then you can communicate that same spaciousness and specialness to others. The constant problem is that we get trapped in the initial inflating experience and most stop right there—which only leads to idolatry, nationalism, group conformity, and religious righteousness. We stay in the containment task of “the first half of life” and never get on to generative religion.¹ Paul himself only slowly comes to this, as described in Romans 9-11, and summed up in his phrase “the whole batch of dough is holy if the first yeast is made holy; all the branches are holy if the root is holy” (11:16).

Jesus is the universalist par excellance, always making the outsider the heroes of his stories: the non-Jews appear as those with more faith and more compassion, the sinners become those who are saved, the women better than the men, and as he continually puts it, “the last will be first”— while the so-called elect and chosen are his constant opponents. Jesus’ clear criterion for one who speaks with authority is simply one who has gone through the belly of the whale experience, or what he calls the “sign of Jonah,” the “only” sign he will give. Neither membership in any group (“a throne”) nor correct verbiage (“Lord, Lord”) is what gives you authority in Jesus’ understanding, but those who “drink the cup that I must drink and are baptized with the baptism with which I must be baptized” (Mark 10:39). This is “the true authority of those who have suffered” and come through the cleansing bath transformed.²

Jesus reaches this shocking and scandalous conclusion because his starting place is quite different. He does not begin with any preoccupation with human sinfulness or the weighing of worthiness or unworthiness (that is the preoccupation of the ego). In fact, he just assumes that we are all “sick and in need of a physician.” As he puts it, “I did not come to call the virtuous” (Mark 2:17). Jesus’ starting place is human suffering instead of human sinfulness. How else can you explain his fulltime ministry of healing, exorcism, affirmation of the excluded ones, and the alleviation of human distress and humiliation? He is not naïve about sin, but just recognizes that human sinfulness, “hardness of heart,” is much more a symptom than a cause. Sin largely reveals the problem and he uses it for diagnostic purposes not for condemnation or exclusion. Sin, for Jesus, is not a set of purity codes or debt codes—which he goes out of his way to flaunt— but inner attitudes which blind and bind us inside of ourselves, and away from communion and mercy.³

It is not moral unworthiness that keeps people from God, but moral righteousness and self-sufficiency. It is that simple recognition, which is almost his constant message, that makes Jesus the ultimate, perennial, and radical reformer of religion. And why religious people oppose him. It makes one wonder if such a foundational critique can ever fashion itself into a proper religion at all. I agree with Simone Weil who said that the problem with Christianity is that it insists on seeing itself as a separate religion, instead of a healing message for all religions. I am afraid that is what will always emerge when you have religion without spirituality, or pious practices without inner experience. The very best thing will then become the very worst thing, and the only way through is to be awakened and astonished by a divine love that is of an utterly new dimension.

1. Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Paula D’Arcy and Richard Rohr, orAdult Christianity and How to Get There by Ron Rolheiser and Richard Rohr, two recorded conferences available from the CAC at www.cacradicalgrace.org.

2. The Authority of Those Who Have Suffered, Richard Rohr, address to the national conference of Catholic Hospital Chaplains, 2005. Single CD available from the CAC at www.cacradicalgrace.org.

3. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg (Harper, San Francisco, 1994), p. 47ff.

Read Part I of “Awakened and Astonished,” published in the July/August/September 2006 edition of Radical Grace. The article was first published in its entirety in the March/April 2006 edition of The Pastoral Review, © The Tablet Publishing Company Limited, ISSN1748-362X, London, England.

Fr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan of the New Mexico province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM.