Neural Buddhism, Newcomer to Postmodernism

For those curious about God and us:

Fr. Don Rickard, M.Div., M.A.,our pastor at Light of Christ Ecumenical Catholic Community here in Longmont, Colorado, wrote his thesis on Postmodernism. He shared some of his research in a chitchat not too long ago, gave me a long, scholarly article by one of the prominent scholars, read and reread and saved. Google then led me to more sources for "Postmodernism" as a quietly current way of talking about God and us. I don't know much about it yet, am leery about writing anything theological – no qualifications -- and hesitate to pontificate on and on. If anyone reading this is up on it or knows the way around the labyrinth of today's theological progress, i.e. religion and culture, being fully human, fully alive in 2008, want to share?

Roger Haight's The Future of Christology, his sequel to Jesus Symbol of God – dissed notificatiionally by the usual ripe and ready Ratzinger wrath, mentions it passim, especially at pages 127-130. His Index suggests checking on "globalism." Is that the same as "global warming?" Could be that merely the letters "g-l-o-b-a-l" is what throws discussion into a tizzy, as usual, between Left and Right? A person's politics decides once again what to pursue, in what to believe?

Why would Catholicism's traditionalists so proud of the meaning of "catholic" as "one" and "universal" -- i.e. global? – hunker down in the bunker and holler? About the weather? As vociferously as they do about the biology of sex and the subservience of humanity before lords on high, to say nothing about life itself. I sometimes get the foolish notion that those who refuse to leave the past hate being human so much they want to die and go to heaven right away. I mean – fundamentally -- the Jesus they claim as role model took off after the resurrection and went back to heaven. Incarnation was just a TDY for him, they say. The quicker it's over, the better.

Postmodernism suggests that the best is yet to come. Stick around.

America had an article last September, "What Are Theologians Saying About Christology? http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10190. Commonweal Blog had,. I guess a post postmodernism one, today, May 13, 2008, at http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/. I think it's OK to set it out here:

http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/

The Neural Buddhists

May 13, 2008, 11:22 pm

Posted by J. Peter Nixon

David Brooks has a fascinating (but I think ultimately flawed) column in, yes, the New York Times talking about the potential impact of neuroscience on religion.  He argues that neuroscience will prove as challenging to 21^st religion as evolutionary biology did to 19^th and 20^th century religion:

 First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It's going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

 I have not read any of the writers Brooks lists, but my initial response is that these are not new issues for Christian theology. The idea that religious doctrines are symbolic expressions of human religious experience has a very long pedigree.  The German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher
was writing in the early 19^th century that religion was rooted in a feeling of "absolute dependence" and this grounding of theology in anthropology later became central to the theological project of liberal Protestantism.

In Catholic theology, this approach was given its most systematic expression by the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner in the second half of the 20^th century.  Very simply stated (which is a dangerous thing to do with Rahner), he argued that Christianity was the answer to questions posed by the transcendental dimension of human experience.  Confronted with the essential mystery of our existence—and in particular the mystery of death—we long for an "absolute savior" who we recognize in the person of Jesus Christ. 

This approach to theology is less popular than it once was.  Post-modern thinkers have raised skeptical questions about the universality of "human religious experience," and that skepticism has influenced theology.  There is increased interest in the particularity of religious traditions.  This has manifested itself in a variety of ways, such as the increased popularity of Karl Barth among Protestant theologians and the recognition of the limitations of Rahner's ideas about "anonymous Christianity" in the context of interreligious dialogue.  Christians and Buddhists do not simply symbolically express a similar reality in different ways.  They really do experience reality in different ways because of the particularity of their traditions.  In his 1984 book The Nature of Doctrine, George Lindbeck suggested that theology was poised to move in a "post-liberal" direction.

Brooks' argument suggests that neuroscience will allow us to see religious traditions as simply diverse expressions of the same underlying brain chemistry.  I must say I'm skeptical.  Just because the same portion of the brain lights up when a Buddhist is meditating or a Christian is praying does not mean that the two are having the same experience. Human experience is always mediated through language and culture.  It is always particular.  That some anthropological constants exist I do not doubt, but those constants "underdetermine" human culture.  All known cultures, for example, have incest taboos, but they differ on what degree of kinship constitutes incest.

Thus the question is not primarily whether the religious traditions of the world reflect the brain but what they do with the brain.  What kind of human culture is made possible by particular religious traditions?  To what extent do those cultures fully actualize the potentialities latent in what Christians (and not only Christians) call "creation?"  How does grace build on nature?

That is not a question that neuroscience—or any science—can ultimately answer.  It requires a leap of faith.  It requires a leap of faith to believe that this oddly organized collection of cells and chemicals is a being of incomparable dignity and transcendent destiny.  It requires a leap of faith to believe that the fullest expression of the human is found not in the lives of John Galt or the New Soviet Man but in an obscure Palestinian Jew who gave his life "as a ransom for many."

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All the above convinces this poor old mind that we really don't know as much as we think we know. Our fascination with being human and a longing both our faith and our knowledge tells us is more, much, much more, has barely begun. For those of us who realize that there are few answers – and surely a pluralism of paths – we honor the questions. And keep asking them. Not that we're searching, searching qua pilgrims. We're just curious about ourselves and the higher power we christen with so many different names, God being the popular one, whether one, triune, or infinite. We do get curiouser when pushing 80, too.

Dicastery Deans, Like Leopards, Don’t Change Their Spots

By the way, in little bleeps of newscasts daily, have we noticed that our tip-toe-through-the-tulips Papa is regressing to his deanship of a certain dicastery? Actually, he never left the CDF, while trying on the wardrobes in papal closets. Especially of late, though, and oh! so quietly, in his selections of cardinalabile of a righteous persuasion like Raymond Burke of St. Louis, the persecutor of Poles and disbarrer of canon lawyers, the reiteration of Paul VI's advice to the marrieds, personal embarrassment over sexual scandals of a sacerdotal kind from a minority hushed and coddled by hierarchs, but none over costumes of the "best and the brightest" in Christendom, himself. Guess he wouldn't sort of go for postmodernism, would he? I kind of liked that fuzzy white stuff under the Arabian rug red stuff over his shoulders. What do you call them? Shawls? Dainty shoulder pads? Fuzzy wuzzies?

Reminded me of Nan, the pretty girl on the vegetable counter at the Uphams Corner Market in Dorchester, Massachusetts. I worked the fish counter on Fridays, filleting mackerel and forking gurry, meats on Saturdays, chopping pork chops, trimming roasts, and peeking over at vegetables a lot all weekend long. Took me six weeks to get up the nerve to ask her to our high school prom. She wore one of those fuzzy white shoulder things over her gown. Hers shed. All over my rented tux. And I was embarrassed at 16. But, I never yanked her license to be, nor lectured her about contraception, either. No teenagers of our time were banned from receiving Communion, like governors and senators are today, because of biology or sex stuff or hanging out with Moonies and Tibetan monks.

Ah! We were innocent then, an innocence hierarchs know nothing about. In the outer reaches of the atmosphere wherein they all breathe and move and have their oligarchical beings, bedecked with gowns from dark and middle ages of another era, befingered with rings gleaming their immense wealth even in the flickering light of candles, bechested, too, with golden chains and crosses, behatted with funny looking headpieces never doffed, befooted on designer shoes trembling up on tiptoe to add cubits to their littleness, in order to look around and check their own fabricated stature against the status and ranking of other prelates, always alone with just each other hanging in there, they are an embarrassment to earthlings. I really think that they have no concept at all about what a human being is. Or is meant to be. The glitter sets them apart as another species of beings.

Now, while we welcome Neural Buddhism as a newcomer to our postmodernity, we should be cautious and remember to begin with the Sutras. In the Buddha's case, none were written down until a few hundred years after his death, much more prolifically than our own meager scriptures. Easterners are swarming in volumes and volumes of scriptures, compared to our own little New Testament, swelled some if one adds in the Old one. Toss in the Qur'an, too, and Middle Eastern holy writ still lags far behind Far Eastern.

Which brings up another rankling question: How come we have no scriptures being written today and have to spend so much time studying those written down thousands of years ago? After, of course, a hundred years or more of oral tradition handed down from grandparents to parents, mother to daughter, father to son, lover to lover, friend to friend. Scriptures are always written in languages whose nuances we have trouble figuring out, so much so that we're not sure that the people of those times even understood what was being read to them. We kind of get mixed up between exegesis and hermeneutics.

No Buddhas around now? Would God dare try incarnation again? On the grounds that we really missed it the first time around and could benefit from a second try? In one of those postmodern daring and courageous thoughts, could we logically, rationally, faith-fully turn that whole descent from heaven around the other way and explore our life now, in 2008 and the years yet to come, the way Jesus showed us back then in the first century? Suppose we started talking and writing that we are called to Indivination, taking on godness, as God took on humanity in the Incarnation.

Why not? Everyone could try that: Left, Right, Middle, Inside, Outside. St. Paul subtly told us: "I live now, yet not I. Christ truly lives in me. -Iam vivo, sed non ego. Vivit vero in me Christus." And yet, were we to talk like that, write like that, -- God forbid! act like that -- someone is sure to go looking for our heads, if not our licenses to be and to think and to share. That someone is usually a Dean of a Dicastery, a Hierarch, a Pope, or one of their clones. Banned and barred is the excommunication of today, a bit less torturous and tortuous than the stake and fire of holy inquisitions.

Despite the news of papal primacy, still going on strong in its third millennium, some of us think it's OK now to share as well as pay, think as well as pray, dare as well as obey. It is good to be fully human, fully alive, friends with God. Reach out to a hierarch and invite him to come along.

 

Fr. Tom Doyle Reviews a Book On Pope John Paul II

Father Tom Doyle's review of a book on the papacy of Pope John Paul II was rejected by an "independent" Catholic publication, because "it was thought to be 'biased.'" It has been put up on the Internet at: http://reform-network.net/?p=1657

For those of us working and praying for reform and renewal of our Church, any criticism of ours towards the papacy, hierarchy, and political/governmental structure of the Church is deemed "biased" and, accordingly, dismissed. We use pop phrases occasionally to protest such infantile treatment by the oligarchy, when we let it be known that we are aware of the Curia's fundamental opinion of us as "The Laity , Those Who Pay, Pray and Obey." When they added, "Sit Up! Listen Up! Shut Up!" I replied, "Won't."

Most likely, any characterization of me before The Boston Globe unmasked the scandal which made public the greatest crisis the Roman Catholic Church has ever experienced – Martin Luther's Reformation was just the introduction – would have been, "Him? Oh! he's just one of those lapsed Catholics, whining." I was trying to be "spiritual" and definitely not "religious." Church attendance was sporadic. The news gave me the "excuse" I was looking for to leave the Church, which had, over my lifetime to that point, slowly become opposed to everything my heart was telling me about being "fully human, fully alive."But I couldn't do it.

The voice within kept saying, oh! so quietly, "You're into your 70s now. With your background, you could help a little." I floundered without foundering, looked in on the Alphabet Soup of The People of God: ARCC, CTA, VOTF, SNAP, TBOC. Got banned and barred from parish property, when using one of those acronyms, by an "old-fashioned" Bishop. Tried to go it alone. They were all good, but were not churches. I realized I could do little or nothing on my own, alone, just me, reaching out with a computer. I desperately needed a community in which to love and be loved, an assembly, a church. The RCC wouldn't let me back in, even though I entitled myself as "A Lapsed Agnostic" rather than "A Lapsed Catholic On the Way Back In."

Jean and I found a Church here in Longmont, CO -- gracefully? -- which allowed us to be who we are. And we knew we were home, no longer merely "spiritual" but also "religious." The religion was, and is, Catholicism. The only difference: the politics is different. I am no longer ashamed to answer the question, "Your Religion?" with hesitation, "Um, well, ah, Catholic." To the next, "Practicing Catholic?" I usually stumbled, "Well, um, Huh?" Now, it's, "We go to The Light of Christ Church, an Ecumenical Catholic Community." Interrogators are nonplussed.

The lawyer in me back in 2002 saw that the issue was not sex or abuse of children, not dogma or discipline, not catechism or apologetics, not even theology, but POWER. It was so at the beginning. It has always been so. It was so in 2002. It is so now. The issue is POWER, the absolute kind, which has nothing to do with religion, with spirituality, with Jesus. It is simply and horribly a predominant characteristic of being human – POLITICS. Those in power, of course, whether in State or Church, insist they are there only to serve, because they are the self-appointed elite, the hierarchy of Plato's Philosopher King and His Guardians, the hierarchy of Papal Primacy and Its Curia. It is never just one person. It is always the privileged few. The Oligarchy.

My feelings about John Paul II, from the very day he was elected in 1978, was that he was "on stage" so much of the time that the "real JP" could never be seen. He was a caricature in his own mind, and the papacy was his sandbox. He was not evil as bawdy popes might have been, with children and grandchildren robed as Cardinals. As power-lusting ones were in dividing up the world between Portugal and Spain by drawing a line on a map. As warlike ones who pumped up Crusades or stooped to slaughter those, like me, who asked questions and protested their abuse of power. But, John Paul II had the POWER and he abused it. And the Church is now falling apart from its own self-abuse, resumed by him, continued by Pope Benedict XVI.

Father Tom Doyle, a priest, canon lawyer, man I respect and admire and follow ever since January, 2002, has written a good, solid review of a book criticizing Karol Józef Wojtyla as a man and as a hierarch and as a pope. His review is worth reading with as open a mind as can be mustered up for the encounter. The review is at http://reform-network.net/?p=1657.

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The following is the review and comments, from: Voice from the Desert, May 11, 2008, http://reform-network.net/?p=1657

Top of Form

Tom Doyle Reviews Book on John Paul II and His Papacy

I received the following book review from Tom Doyle today, 5.10.2008, via email.

Tom asked to me to include the following note with the review:

I was asked to review "The Power and the Glory" by David Yallop for a prominent independent Catholic publication. After completing a requested revision and shortening of the review, I heard nothing for weeks. Upon inquiry I was advised that it had been rejected because it was thought to be "biased." The review may well be biased but then most book reviews are. On the other hand this is a review of a book that is critical of the papacy of Pope John Paul II. The review is not critical of the criticism but is a positive assessment of a book that should be an integral part of any history of the Church under the late pope. TPD

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THE POWER AND THE GLORY" INSIDE THE DARK HEART OF JOHN PAUL II's VATICAN

By David Yallop

New York, Carroll and Graf, Publishers, 2007

530 pages

Reviewed by Thomas Doyle, O.P., J.C.D.

"Few papacies have inspired so many myths as the reign of Pope John Paul II." The Power and the Glory, p. 152.

After reading the first chapter of this momentous, and at times shocking book, one is led to the conclusion that not only few papacies, but few popes have been surrounded by as much myth and misconception as Karol Wojtyla, priest, bishop, cardinal, pope, and in the minds and emotions of many, saint. Wojtyla's life and 26 year papacy had already prompted devoted followers to begin calling him John Paul the Great within the first year after his death.

Even John Paul's most ardent supporters, including those clamoring for his fast-track canonization, would have to agree that his life and reign as pope were not without significant controversy. In spite of the massive superhuman aura surrounding him, critical studies of his papacy and his theology have come forth from reputed scholars. Nothing however, comes close to the detailed and critical examination that David Yallop concluded and which resulted in this book. The author's widely acknowledged investigative skills are at their best in his fearless quest to discover the real Karl Wojtyla and the unvarnished truth about the Vatican that he shaped and dominated as Pope John Paul II. Yallop devoted eight years to research, interviewing knowledgeable sources and probing deeply into the reality of the man and the papacy that dominated the Catholic Church for a quarter century.

This book will shock and enrage the ardent supporters of the late pope yet one must honestly ask if the adulation and emotional attachment is actually for the carefully crafted larger than life image as opposed to the man himself. David Yallop's detailed study of just about every aspect of John Paul II's personal and public life leave no other conclusion than that the adoring faithful were really enamored of an image and not reality.

Even those who have been highly critical of the late Pope's reign, characterized by some as "autocratic," and of his apparent efforts to redefine the memory and spirit of Vatican Council II will be uncomfortably surprised at Yallop's well researched and solidly supported de-mythologization of Karol Wojtyla's early years in Poland, first under Nazi and later under Communist occupation. He first flattens the notion, no doubt created by Vatican spin meisters, that young Karol was an active participant in Polish partisan activities to protect Jews from the Nazis. No such thing according to Yallop's research. Instead, the future pope "actively attempted to persuade others to abandon violent resistance and trust in the power of prayer." (P. 239). Even more shocking are the results of the author's interviews with several Jewish authorities who said straight out that there are no records of Wojtyla doing anything to protect or save Jews during World War II.

Although it is widely believed that Pope John Paul II was the single most important force in the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is no lack of serious foreign policy experts, historians and political scholars who would dispute such a claim. Yallop's chapter 3, A Very Polish Revolution puts the pope's role in a much dimmer light, portraying him as highly cautious and retreating to reliance on prayer rather than decisive action. If one takes this rendition of the late pope's non-role in the demolition of Communism and mixes it with his tacit approval of military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile and El Salvador as well as his negative reaction to liberation theology, one can only wonder at the veracity of the claims that this man was a world class human rights advocate.

Other reviewers of this book claim that the most "explosive" chapters present the author's exhaustive research into the complex Vatican financial scandals and the papal and Vatican response to the clergy sexual abuse revelations that began in the U.S. and quickly became an international reality. Although the two prominent financial sagas, the so-called Banco Ambrosiano debacle that began in the 70's and featured Roberto Calvi and Archbishop Paul Marcinkas as leading players, and the Martin Frankel insurance fraud of the 90's, are complex and difficult for the average person to follow, Yallop lays both out in clear and logical terms. The theme throughout, which puts the pope in the middle of it all, is that money has a powerful way of blurring the line between integrity and greed for the denizens of the Vatican.

While I admit to being perplexed by some of the complex details of the Vatican's financial wheeling and dealing, the clergy sexual abuse phenomenon is something I am only too well aware of in painful detail. People have reacted to the clergy abuse scandal, now in its third decade, with wonder, anger, rage, shock and disbelief. A constant question has been why has the Pope done nothing to stop it? The question is certainly valid given the harsh reality that Pope John Paul II knew in detail about what was happening in the United States from the outset of the first revelations in 1984 and 1985. For eight years after the first explosion in 1984, the Pope said nothing. Then in 1993 he issued the first of 12 public statements, all of which said about the same thing. His theme was that clergy abuse was evil, the priests who did it were sinners, the poor bishops who had to put up with it were suffering and the victims needed prayer. The papal master spin doctor, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, stated in 1994 that this was primarily an American problem and then parroted the papal line that western secularism, materialism and sensationalism had a lot to do with exaggerating the problem. Within a year the Irish government fell because its leader had been implicated in the obstruction of justice in the notorious Brendan Smyth affair. But much more explosive was the exposure of Hans Hermann Groer, the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, as a sexual abuser turned prince of the church, in mid 1995. This man had been appointed from nowhere by John Paul II in 1986, according to some, largely because of his promotion of Marian devotion. The pope not only did nothing when the scandal first broke, but, according to Yallop's research, was outraged at the Austrian bishops for failing to keep the lid on the terrible publicity. In spite of it all the proof was conclusive and Groer was not only forced to resign but ordered not to perform any public functions as a cardinal or bishop.

Yallop's chapter Beyond Belief, is a highly detailed and fact-intense short history of the clerical sex abuse problem and how it was handled during the reign of John Paul II. The stories of clergy abuse and hierarchical cover-up abound so it is not necessary to repeat them here. Suffice it to say that Yallop's rendition of the multi-faceted and totally tragic sex abuse saga is not only factually correct but his reasons as to why the pope remained impotent are on target. He best sums it up with a short sentence on the papal silence: "He brought with him… to the Vatican
practices that he had embraced throughout his life as a priest. They included an intense pathological hatred of any revelation that indicated the Catholic Church was not a perfect institution… All dissent must be kept behind closed doors, whether of church politics, scandalous behavior or criminal activity." (P. 314). The clergy sex abuse scandal contains ample doses of all three and the late pope appears to have sacrificed open advocacy for living children in favor of tacit protection of a non-living structure. He never publicly apologized to the countless victims and he consistently refused to ever meet with them. Perhaps the most egregious of his responses to the scandal was the much-publicized short-circuiting of the canonical process investigating accusations made against the celebrated founder and superior general of the Legionaries of Christ, Marcial Maciel-Degollado. That disastrous intervention plus the rehabilitation of Bernard Law by making him Archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica convinced abuse victims that the pope cared little for them and much for the Church's hierarchical aristocracy. Yallop's description of the facts confirms this conviction.

The Power and the Glory is a book that had to be written, not to support the mythological anti-papal or anti-Catholic forces, but because the Church and contemporary culture sorely need a reality check on the hagiographic forces that have gone out of control and threaten to seriously distort a vitally important chapter of modern-day history. This book had to be written for the good of the Church as well. John Paul II was well on the way to becoming a cult figure….far removed not only from historical reality but from the role of pope as pastoral father and not supreme emperor. His memory and the good he did is much better served if remembered as it actually was and not through the lens of myth. "His obituaries abound with myths, fantasies and dis-information" says Yallop. "The cult of personality which John Paul so reveled in focuses precisely on the man but at great cost to the faith."

This book is about much more than Pope John Paul II. It is about the grave scandals that have been so much a part of the contemporary Church. It is about the thinly veiled political aspect of the Church that has confused earthly power with the propagation of the Word. It is about the actions, inactions and questionable responses of the late pope and the Vatican bureaucracy he created to these scandals and to the socio-cultural forces at work in the modern world. Finally, it is about a model of "Church" that has grown increasingly at odds with the vision of Vatican II or perhaps worse, it is about a model of "Church" that has always been there, yet reduced in recent times to lurking in the shadows, waiting to be once more empowered.

We have seen in the era of John Paul II a dramatic rise in the power, influence and presence of the papacy, a rise described by its followers as a one approaching the peak of perfection of what papacy and Church ought to be. Yet with this rise, propelled by John Paul, there came the need to deny, cover or convert anything that threatened his image of the Church as perfect society. David Yallop may not have helped John Paul II's cause for canonization, whether or not such a step is even relevant in today's world. But he surely has helped the People of God by reminding us that the center and focus can never be on any leader no matter how fascinating, dramatic or colorful. It must always be grounded in the Church as People of God and not as Kingdom of the Few.

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3 Responses to "Tom Doyle Reviews Book on John Paul II and His Papacy"

1. William Cleary Says:
   May 11, 2008 at 1:09 am
   
   

   The Doyle review of David Yallop's new book is a lightsome breakthrough for serious religious people. Finally there is an informed book on John Paul II, and it will help us to place him properly in the history of religion: a man who seriously crippled the Church and misguided millions into superstition, sexism, and a cult of his shallow egocentric personality.
   

2. Carolyn Disco Says:
   May 11, 2008 at 2:00 am
   
   

   It is more than disappointing that an independent Catholic publication declined to run this review (and we all suspect which one). Tom Doyle as always has written perceptively, and certainly with the expertise to do so.
   

   I recall a PBS documentary on JPII that also noted the pope did nothing to help the Jews. If memory serves, the film reported the pope indicating that himself.
   

   And the notion of the church as a perfect society was reflected in JPII's various apologies, conditional in nature: any deficiencies were the fault of certain of the church's sons and daughters, never the church per se.
   

   David Gibson noted in his book, "The Coming Catholic Church," that such "distancing language can appear so couched and diplomatic that it fuels the very resentments it was designed to assuage." p 117
   

   There was a fascinating Australian radio broadcast right after JPII died of an interview with Peter Hebblethwaite, noted Vatican expert, before Hebblethwaite himself died in 1994. The interview on The Religion Report was done with the stipulation it not be aired until after JPII's died.
   

   William Johnson, another historian, was also questioned on the same program. His analysis of the pope's style of governance is incredible reading.
   I highly recommend the full interviews as a corollary to Tom's review, and still available at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s1333976.htm .
   

   Excerpt:
   

   Stephen Crittenden: You say that there's actually a disconnect between the Pope's collective achievement and what you call a blind spot that this Pope had at a personal level, and you talk about acts of personal cruelty.
   

   William Johnston: Well I call it a blind spot; I think that's a kind way, it may have been deliberate. The example I was told from an eye witness when the American bishops had one of their joint visits to the Pope in the early '90s, he greeted each of them individually as they stood in a circle.
   

   Stephen Crittenden: By name?
   

   William Johnston: By name, he knew their names, their diocese and something about them. He went around the circle and charmed all of them. There was one man he wished to punish and each of the three times he came to that man, he was overheard to lean into him and say, 'And what's your name? What's your diocese?' He did that three times. Now that kind of humiliation among one's peers smacks of Soviet governmental technique, and I think it was obviously deliberate, it's cruel, it's even vindictive and it's now coming to light.
   

   Another one that I find troubling is there are 4,000 bishops, 3,000 have been appointed by the recent pontiff, and when one thinks that many of those 3,000 appointees involved passing over highly able priests who in the normal run of things would have become bishop. So I like to think that probably 2,500 more than capable potential bishops, who did not get the nod.
   

   Stephen Crittenden: In other words there's been a kind of cruelty to talented people who've been passed over.
   

   William Johnston: Exactly. They've been excluded, they're not acknowledged, we don't know who they are, we can just imagine they're there. Their careers have been blighted, if you will, and I regard that as a mistreatment as well as a dreadful personnel policy, it's not the way to run an organisation.
   

   Stephen Crittenden: And not blighted because of disloyalty, a lot of people have kind of put their heads down and remained silent and put up with it.
   

   William Johnston: But you see, that again is the Eastern European technique, where, as Peter Hebblethwaite put it, you humiliate a few stars as a warning to the others, and the others then withdraw their dissent and go private. It's a technique of achieving conformity by punishing only a few exemplary figures. It works extremely well, and I would suggest the Pope saw how well it worked in Poland, and he just borrowed the technique and used it in his organisation, because it's an effective technique.
   ———
   Peter Hebblethwaite: … But that you see, became one of the great theories that was used to justify the pontificate, which was that Paul VI in his charming simplicity and goodness was altogether too weak, and irresolute, and he didn't knock down his theologians. 'Now we're going to do the job properly and you'll see how it should be done', with the consequences that we know.
   

   Very early on in the pontificate, somebody said something that was absolutely prophetic, that four theologians would be chosen for the axe, as it were, each in a different field and each representing a different interest. One on Christology, Doctrine of Christ, it was Edward Schillebeeckx , the Flemish Dominican; in Ecclesiology, Doctrine of the Church, it was Hans Küng, in Germany. Liberation theology was Leonardo Boff, a Franciscan from Brazil and then the fourth was Charles Curran as a moral theologian in the United States, who lost his licence to teach. So these were kind of symbolic errors as it were, or even that was the most interesting thing, that errors were not found in these people, or not necessarily found, they were condemned for their opinions, and that was something new in the church, you shouldn't condemn people for their opinions. You can condemn them for their errors if you demonstrate they have perpetrated errors.
   

   Stephen Crittenden: The late Peter Hebblethwaite.
   

3. Edward Hartmann Says:
   May 11, 2008 at 11:27 am
   
   

   This church is still in crisis. The last thing we need is another Pope cannonized. So may I suggest the following to the Princes as they sit around after dinner with a glass of scotch at the Vatican. How about searching for a married couple to cannonize, perhaps a couple that actually slept in the same bed and (God forbid) enjoyed God's gift of sexual intimacy. Imagine what an impact this would have on our church. But I forgot that the elephant is still in the room.
   

 

 

A Papal Visit to America

This current backwash on Pope Benedict XVI's few days in America keeps urging me to throw out my own prejudices against the man, as I did against his predecessor, whose sandbox was the papacy. But I demurred on the realization that my opinion is a simple dislike of both of them, as well as of so many in the long line of 280 or so since St. Peter died. McBrien's History of the Popes is well thumbed, a bit tattered, as is O'Malley's The First Jesuits. When those two are side by side with MacCulloch's The Reformation, I see. And what I see is history. For us alive today, we are making more history for the future, not only in the popes given us by Conclaves, but also presidents by what is sometimes referred to as the vote of the people, except that is not necessarily so. I often wonder why so many reformers insist on we the people electing bishops and popes, when we take a gander at what we have elected in our own beloved America for presidents: Bush, Nixon, Coolidge. Like popes, only a few of our presidents stand out enough to make us proud and grateful that we have the vote.

Cynics say that we get what we deserve. High-minded, impartial, intelligent ones – like us? – have always preceded us and made popes and presidents for good or for bad. Those skilled in politics have usually gotten their own elevated to kingships of sorts and dynasties have ruled, for good or for worse. Where in between those two we are right now is answered by those who like Pope Benedict XVI, and liking him, approve of how he comports himself, as well as by those who do not like him. Same for Nixon and more likely than not for Bush with a W. Used to be the same for Reagan, but apparently he wore well after he died and we forget his bad days. Poor Jimmy Carter has regressed from commanding submarines to peanut farming and is now being called a "bigot." Were Lincoln alive, he'd probably be shot again, as was Kennedy, both brothers, and their friend Martin Luther King. So, we should be careful in talking about those we like and those we dislike. 

Then again, I wonder whether it is Ratzinger a/k/a Benedict we like or dislike, or is it the papacy itself, regardless of the man who is dressed in white?

For those who like history, scan McBrien's History of the Popes; there weren't too many outstanding ones and precious few good ones, according to him. If loyalty is your thing, along with a partiality for Jesuit scholarship, read John O'Malley, The First Jesuits, Chapter 8, "The Jesuits and the Church at Large," beginning at page 284, The first two sections of that chapter are "Bishops and Theologians," and "The Papacy and the Popes."  St. Ignatius and his young companions had a very tough time with some hierarchs. Paul III gave the Jesuits their charter in 1540. Julius III gave them the German College in Rome, later the "Greg."The good Pope Marcellus" lasted just 21 days, a brief but welcomed interlude in the early struggles just to stay alive. And then came the bugaboo of them all, Gian Pietro Carafa, who hated St. Ignatius and all he stood for, and compounded that hatred as Paul IV. He was so well known for nepotism and harshness that he was despised in Rome.

So, the Jesuits rode it out, kept their heads down, rallied friendly hierarchs around themselves, and waited for Pius IV and Pius V, who pushed through the Council of Trent. The 16^th century ended with four popes taking the papal throne in an astoundingly short period of 16 months, and the Jesuits were still alive and well when the 17^th century began.

The 16^th was a tough century in which to found a new exempt order of men, which now faces another uncertain future, it being hard to determine whether Ratzinger/Benedict XVI will be ruthless, as usual, or smiling all the while.

There's an awful lot of politics in the Roman Catholic Church and an awful lot of it is dirty, down and dirty, somehow unbecoming an institution claiming to be a Church, "one, holy, Catholic and apostolic."

Too often I see the Church in the New Testament, not among Jesus and his apostle and disciples, but entrenched in the Pharisees and Sanhedrin, the High Priests of the 1^st century, so like unto so many of our own hierarchs of this third millennium. 

Read the Sermon on the Mount and take a look at Rome. Power corrupts, as the saying goes . . .

 

The People and The Pope, More of the Same

Diarmaid MacCullock, professor of the history of the Church at Oxford, acknowledged as a scholar world-wide, wrote The Reformation: A History, in 2003. Lured by the enthusiasm of the reviewers, I bought it then and am now up to page174 of 792. I'm beginning to imagine I'll say what Father "Stately" Gately, SJ, who had come to Shadowbrook to die, said to the Rector, Father Bill Finneran, SJ, who had given him a two volume history of Ireland to read, "Gee, Bill, thanks, but I don't think I'll have time to finish it."

 In The Reformation, early on, MacCullock says that Luther was inspired, not by the antics in Rome, but by St. Augustine's theories of orginal sin, his  forlorn and bleak nature of man, his blessing on "just wars" and his rigid theology of church, even though all of that was writ a thousand years before Luther nailed his own 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517. The more I read after MacCullock proposed the relationship to St. Augustine, the more I came to imagine that the same Augustinian stuff is going on strong today. As a novice in ecclesiology and church history, I am quick to jump to opinions in tune with the tumbling emotions within me when I think Rome, Curia, Popes, Cardinals and read Thomas Reese's recent six proposals for the reform of the Vatican. The feeling is that the history of the Church and of Christianity is the history of the mother of all brainwashing, par excellence, by those who could read pagan philosophers and use their thoughts and words to teach the Gospel story told so simply by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the others.  

My own Catholicism right now, the mental stuff of it, feels like a faithless, hopeless, loveless confusion of intellectualities, stuffeed with the big names: Clement, Origen, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, without too many really big ones after that Thirteenth Century, at least until an Augustinian monk Martin Luther lit the match on the tinder box of western Christianity.  That Catholicism gets a life with Thomas Reese, SJ, and Roger Haight, SJ, and Jacques Dupuis, SJ, and Karl Rahner, SJ, along with so many others of our own times, that I begin to think that all we are doing in our 3^rd millennium is repeating what has been going on since St. John finished the Fourth Gospel.

More of the same, over and over, with the instigation of the Reformation of the 16^th century itself being attributed to the ideas and thoughts of Augustine of Hippo of the 5^th century.  We are still debating today what they were debating from the beginning, each one insisting that his or her ideas are those of Jesus Messiah.  He was crucified for his ideas and words. A lot of those who claimed to explain him were crucified, too, or burned at the stake, by the high priests of their times. And so it goes on and on and on. If today, I were to say I can explain Jesus Messiah, I had first better make sure I please Rome's High Priests.  Wonder how long Garry Wills will last without an excommunication of sorts, after his trilogy: What Jesus Meant; What Paul Meant; What the Gospels Meant. Tom Reese, too, kicked off the Jesuit magazine America by an angry Cardinal Ratzinger as soon as he became Pope Benedict X VI.  

As for Thomas Reese's six proposals for reform, my impetuous and unlearned suggestion would be to abolish the College of Cardinals first, then elect Bishops locally, and set up some kind of governance wherein there are checks and balances on power, its use and abuse. To do that, we need Thomas Reeses, people who know what they are doing and are not just reacting emotionally to the brainwashing of two millennia, some of which cleared the mind, a lot of which drowned it. Like Father Reese, I am pretty sure it will never happen. Not even Luther or Calvin or Zwingli or Henry VIII succeeded. Proof? Cable TV these days has been taken over by the Pope, who was once called a Rotweiler, an Enforcer, an implacable, etc., etc., etc.  He is a powerful man, regardless of his track record in the abuse of power, or maybe precisely because of it. My biased personal opinion is that a good lot of us are not paying him much attention, nor giving him heed.

 

AN OLD ENGLISH COMP 101 TEACHER GRADES CARDINAL JOSEPH RATZINGER’S LETTER TO THE BISHOPS ON THE COLLABORATION OF MEN AND WOMEN IN THE CHURCH AND IN THE WORLD

 

Written back on August 2, 2004

 

I. INTRODUCTION
 

There is in the current domain now a Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World. First dated May 31, 2004, it was released through Vatican Information Services two months later on July 31, 2004, over the signatures of two principals of the most important Dicastery of the Roman Curia, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF): Joseph Card. Ratzinger, Prefect, and Archbishop Angelo Amato, SDB, Secretary. Pope John Paul II approved the document and ordered its publication.
 

The term Collaboration comes from the New Catholic Catechism, 378 which reads in full:
"The sign of man's familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden (cf.Gen 2:8). There he lives 'to till it and keep it' Work is not yet a burden, (Gen 2:15; cf. 3:17-19) but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation."
 

The Index to the Catechism shows 9 more uses of collaboration, all of which are irrelevant as they deal with man's collaboration with God and not with women. One of those sections, however, offered the grace to submit this criticism of the Letter. Number 2238 - The Duties of Citizens states:
 

Their loyal collaboration includes the right, and at times the duty, to voice their just criticisms of that which seems harmful to the dignity of persons and to the good of the community."
 

I respectfully submit, as a lay person, that the letter is harmful to the dignity of persons and to the good of the community. It is, further, an embarrassment for the Roman Catholic Church and must be withdrawn, with appropriate apologies immediately.
 

II. USE OF THE TERM COLLABORATION
 

The term, although the very title of the document, is used but three times, never defined, never applied, never explained. There is no development of the history of other attempts at collaboration, whether men and women do collaborate or having attempted to do, have discarded it, Without a definition, we are left without any understanding of what the cardinal and the CDF is talking about. Is Rome proposing courtship, marriage, polygamy, monogamy, patriarchy, matriarchy, free sex, prostitution, homosexuality in order to understand heterosexuality, heterosexuality in order to understand homosexuality, biological determinism, or solitary enjoyment of one's own body via self-induced orgasmic events and the teaching of the same to others of the opposite sex? What is the CDF writing about?
 

Here the three references, each one qualified by "the differences between men and women."
 

1. Second paragraph: "After a brief presentation and critical evaluation of some current conceptions of human nature, this document will offer reflections – inspired by the doctrinal elements of the biblical vision of the human person that are indispensable for safeguarding his or her identity – on some of the essentials of a correct understanding of active collaboration, in recognition of the difference between men and women in the Church and in the world.
   

 

1. Par. 4: "4.In the face of these currents of thought, the Church, enlightened by faith in Jesus Christ, speaks instead of active collaboration between the sexes precisely in the recognition of the difference between man and woman,"
   

 

1. Near Par. 13: "Placed within Christ's Paschal mystery, they no longer see their difference as a source of discord to be overcome by denial or eradication, but rather as the possibility for collaboration, to be cultivated with mutual respect for their difference."
   

 

Fine, for Cardinal Ratzinger, but what is this difference which has him so apoplectic that he spends years writing and issuing a letter to all the bishops in the world? What does he mean by collaboration? In what does he want men and women to collaborate? Is such collaboration really from "recent times"; "certain currents of thought which are often at variance with the authentic advancement of women"; "some current conceptions of human nature?"
 

These are, as the reader will easily recognize, the very three phrases with which he belabored us in the opening of that long letter. What are they? Who are they? Where are they? When are they? Why are they? Nameless, unknown, yet recent and current, the cardinal says? Truly? Does that make them so? Even if he is the Prefect of the mightiest Congregation in the Curia, the CDF? When he speaks, do not nations tremble, all bishops bow, the pope himself applauds?
 

Pardon his reverence, but he is bombasting nothing, absolutely nothing, just pompous empty words. The visible head on earth of a Vox et praeterea nihil – A voice and besides that, nothing."

Let me remind him also, as the Cardinal Prefect that he is, that collaboration is undoubtedly the poorest possible word he could have used for the relationship between men and women. We men and women among the people of God do happen to like and love each other, the Cardinal's warped view of us notwithstanding. The last time the term collaboration was prominent was at the end of WW II when the Free French rounded up the collaborateurs who had been so helpful to the Nazis during the occupation of France.
 

III THE QUESTION
 

Unless I misread the letter entirely, it has something to do with feminism, at least in the tendencies – the cardinal's word – of accentuating differences and reaching for power, or of minimizing them and seeking equality between homo- and hetero- as prefixes for sexuality, or as he put it polymorphous sexuality. By which he is taken to mean the exclusion of bestiality, sadism, masochism, and sexual abuse of minors by clergy? If polymorphous, why get so upset? These are merely tendencies. They may not even be real.
 

The American Heritage Dictionary says that polymorphous means the occurrence of different forms, stages, or types in individual organisms or in organisms of the same species, independent of sexual variations. If we were to stick with definitions we understand, the cardinal's terms are as meaningless as his title on collaboration, leading to the same conclusion: he just does not know what he is talking about, does he?
 

Proof of this lacuna in his thinking is the heading of this second section of his letter -- I. The Question. I've read that section 25 times now and haven't yet found The Question. Does he have one? Where is it? Here is what I came up with from topic sentences in each paragraph.

1. New approaches to women's issues. First tendency is subordination.
   

 

1. Second tendency is to deny differences.
   

 

1. Human attempt to be freed from one's biological conditioning.
   

 

1. Patriarchal conception of God nourished by an essentially male-dominated culture.
   

 

1. In the face of these currents of thought, the Church speaks instead of active collaboration between the sexes precisely in the recognition of the difference between man and woman.
   

 

1. To understand better the basis, meaning and consequences of this response turn briefly to Sacred Scriptures.
   

 

As the six paragraphs in the section, where is the question? What are the new approaches to women's issues? Any examples, names, places, leaders, authors? What did he mean by attempts to be freed of biological conditioning? Castration? By currents of thought is he actually saying feminism? If so, why not say it – F-E-M-I-N-I-S-M?
 

There is a long and readily accessible article in the Harper Collins Encyclopedia of Catechism, which talks clearly about Mary Wollstonecraft's book on A Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792, and notes The First Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Not quite current, or recent, but classic nonetheless. Did the cardinal know from his office at the CDF inside the Vatican that Feminism is perhaps the most important movement in the world today, bar none, and ranges over every human activity, including churches? Just read this quote from Harper Collins at p. 523:
 

Feminism may be liberal, radical, romantic, or socialist. Liberal feminism emphasizes legal and political equality for women; radical feminism analyzes patriarchal structures for the purpose of liberating women from them. Romantic feminism aspires to bring so-called feminine values to bear on the public order, while socialist feminism focuses on the sexual division of labor, production, and reproduction and the connection between class, race and gender in oppressive systems.
 

If this is what the cardinal is attacking, why not be clear about it. Which type of feminism? All of them? Just the Radical ones? If not, is he really attacking women in general? For the last time, with some exasperation, I ask, WHAT IS THE QUESTION?
 

IV. THE BIBLICAL VERSION OF THE HUMAN PERSON
 

With all due respect to myself, there is no intention of trying to discuss Scripture with the cardinal. He is the Cardinal Prefect of the CDF. I'm an old layman, but I studied Classical and Koine Greek from the age of 10 to 25, and am now refurbishing it to read the NT in its original language. What I read doesn't talk to me the way it does to the CDF. My dictionaries apparently do not agree with theirs. The cardinal and I could spar a little for a while, but he would succeed in the last round with a knockout blow, were I to last that long.
 

In his section on Basic Elements of the Biblical Vision of the Human Person there were citations to the OT 20 times, and to the NT just 5. They were what any lay person would expect just from being in Church on Sundays, and a lot of them were general references to the ecclesiological theory of the Church being the bride of Christ. Most of the man/woman cites were the few from the Creation story in Genesis: 8 of them. That's all.  I imagined that some young student was given the job to come up with cites, as young lawyers are when the senior partner wants a law memo salted and peppered with legal references. Whoever did it, ran terms like woman, bride, virgin, man, and started at two minutes before closing time, printing out the egregiously few grains he came up with. Then, the cardinal signed it. Just for fun and by contrast, I ran Biblical Nature of Man and Woman in Google and got 314,000 hits in 0.41 seconds. Women in the Bible, got 4,200,000 hits in 0.17 seconds. For Women in the Church the number of hits was astonishing at 7,000,000 in just 0.68 seconds.
 

So, let me just say that the research assistants who were to find relevant scriptural references for the salt and pepper in the letter, left out a lot of important ones. If they had gone to Google, they would have come up with more than just the standard old stuff out of Genesis, with a couple of smatterings from the rest of the OT and the NT under whatever term they used to find citations. Looks like they mixed up sex with ecclesiology, too, paying more attention to the Church being the bride of Christ, rather than to the Collaboration of Men and Women in the World and in the Church – which is after all the title of the letter and the topic they are supposed to be developing in this teaching of the Magisterium to all the Bishops in the world. Right? Could the cardinal have fallen asleep and forgot what he was doing when he awoke, even over the years this document was in the drafting stages?
 

I just can't resist this assessment, as a former teacher of freshmen English Composition at Sophia University, Tokyo. This letter is the worst piece of amateurish writing I have seen in a long time. It deserves an F and its author would most likely have flunked the course.
 

It is poorly conceived, illogically laid out, purports to be feinting at a "straw woman", who is so "strawy" that she can't even be seen, and in the final analysis is all stressed out on sin and sex. The most laughable idiocy in the whole thing is that the heavenly reward is going to be celibacy for all, leading me to imagine the look on the cardinal's face when St. Peter welcomes him and introduces him to the woman who is to be his wife for eternity: Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Ratzinger. an eternal collaboration.
 

V. THE IMPORTANCE OF FEMININE VALUES IN THE LIFE OF SOCIETY

This is a very important part of the Letter, insofar as it manifests what the CDF and Cardinal Ratzinger see when they behold women in our society in this third millennium, not only here in America, but in Europe and throughout the world, in all those places where the Catholic Church has a presence. As in other sections of the letter, the quickest and simplest way to approach such profound insights is to line up the topic sentences of the eight paragraphs constituting the section.
 

1. Women in society have a "capacity for the other".
   

 

1. Women's physical capacity is to give life in motherhood.
   

 

1. Virginity refutes any attempt to enclose women in a mere biological destiny.
   

 

1. The role of women in all aspects of family and social life involving human relationships and caring for others is irreplaceable.
   

 

1. The interrelationship between the two activities of family and work has characteristics different from those in the case of men.
   

 

1. Femininity is more than a simple attribute of the female sex. It designates the fundamental human capacity to live for the other and because of the other. And, we concede, so do men.
   

 

1. The role of women within society is understood and desired as a humanization accomplished through those values. And also for men.
   

 

1. The defense and promotion of equal dignity and common personal values must be harmonized with attentive recognition of the difference and reciprocity between the sexes where this is relevant to the realization of one's humanity, whether male or female.
   

 

What I get in this section is living for the other because of the other, at first for women only, then by an aside, for men also, to show "attentive recognition of the difference and reciprocity of the sexes."
 

What I do not see is conflict, enmity, opposition, struggle, nor do I see collaboration to overcome them. I also do not see why it took years to draft this part. It looks real nice and is, I assume, the way that most happy and contented people are living their lives these days, together. But, what is the point? Where are we going in the letter? Does its author know? Why does it need a letter to all the bishops?
 

VI. THE IMPORTANCE OF FEMININE VALUES IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH

 

After seeing the heading, I wasn't looking for anything vapid or cloying, but that is what I saw and got. There were six paragraphs in this section, kind of sweet and nice, but not anything novel, new, or even important for the collaboration of men and women in society, that is to say in their homes, where they shop, the places of work, vacations that are too short. The topic sentences of the paragraphs sum up the section, but leave one wondering why it took years to write it. Topic sentences in a row, with running comments in brackets below:
 

1. Woman as a "sign" is more than ever central and fruitful.
   
   1. [And so she always has been, my cardinal.}
      

 

1. The existence of Mary is an invitation to the Church to root her very being.
   
   1. [But, of course: beginning with her Fiat and lasting to her standing at the foot of the Cross.]
      

 

1. It is from Mary that the Church always learns the intimacy of Christ.
   
   1. [Not only the Mother of God, but also Mary of Magdala and Christ's other women friends]
      

 

1. To look at Mary and imitate her does not mean, however, that the Church should adopt a passivity inspired by an outdated conception of femininity.
   
   1. [The cardinal is correct in leaving Total Woman" as a caricature of the past, one created by men.]
      

 

1. The reference to Mary, with her dispositions of listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting, places the Church in continuity with the spiritual history of Israel. In Jesus and through him, these attributes become the vocation of every baptized Christian.
   
   1. [These 6 dispositions -- 1.listening, 2. welcoming, 3. humility, 4. faithfulness, 5. praise and 6. waiting – all seem, however, to clothe the woman in the cardinal's imagination, and while nice qualities, do not comprise a full description of the women of our times. Taken alone, all 6 together, are a Ratzinger reverie. A lot of guys I know have all six qualities, too.]
      

 

1. The reservation of priestly ordination solely to men does not hamper in any way women's access to the heart of Christian life.
   
   1. [Of course it hampers women. It is rank discrimination born out of hatred for woman. Celibate cardinals and the popes slithering from their circle, in abject, craven fear of women, ignore and deny the Word of God that we are all made in the image and likeness of God.]
      

 

Typical churchese from those who think they are church. So-so, but cloying. Women are good. They should be like Mary, the Mother of God, to be seen and not heard. Refusing them the priesthood is fine, the men who run the Church say, for women can love the bridegroom of the Church, making some of us men feel a little out of place in such an analogy.
 

Before I get to the Conclusion, has anyone noticed that there is almost nothing so far devoted to men? No discussion of their role in society or in the church. Nothing about their basic qualities. Precious little as to whether they even have a biblical nature or not. Sort of quirky male pride in noting that Jesus came as a male, forgetting that he is, so far, the only male every conceived in the union of a virgin girl with the Holy Spirit. None of us males can make, dare make, such a claim, meaning that Jesus is not so much male as he is unique among all human beings.
 

And if it is taken one step further, since we are all created in the image and likeness of God, there really is no distinction between us, men and women, and since Jesus is God, we, men and women, are created in his image. Why, then cannot women, created in the image of God and like unto Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, be priests as well as men?
 

This is, after all, a response to a letter indicating that there is something amiss or awry in our world and church concerning the Collaboration of Men and Women. Almost Cardinal Ratzinger's entire letter is about women, with precious little comment about men. Why?
 

VII. CONCLUSION

 

Forgive me, my friends, for being so consistent, but once again, I must resort to the topic sentence routine. It is the only way in which we can see the inanity of this letter which purports to be an urgent and world-shaking statement of Catholic teaching due to recent events. It was years in the drafting and writing. It comes from the CDF, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led by the most powerful cardinal of all cardinals, Joseph Ratzinger, and commanded to be published by our elderly pope, John Paul II. The conclusion is not a conclusion to the letter; it does not conclude. It makes no reference to any part of the letter at all. It is a few paragraphs of spiritual sounding phrases, tossed together like a salad, light and frothy and holy, as if it were being offered to third graders at a mid-afternoon recess.

.

Like the rest of this confounding letter, I have read the Conclusion 25 times now. Here is what I think the Cardinal is saying to all the Bishops in the whole wide world as the new way for the collaboration of men and women in the world and in the church.
 

Jesus makes all things new and is triumphant over sin.

 

Thus, man's relationship with woman is transformed in converting to God who loved us so he gave us his Son.

 

We must humbly pray to the Blessed Virgin who showed us how to love.

 

The Church knows the power of sin can almost lead to despair but the power of forgiveness leads to peace, because "God is love."

 

The Pope has read this document and approves of it.

 

And that, my friends, is it. If you can garner anything from it, you are better than I. I struggled with this letter for three full days, trying to find out

1. What is he saying?
   
2. Why did he say it?
   
3. What does it mean.
   

 

I came up with answers for each of those three questions:

1. Nothing.
   
2. I don't know.
   
3. Nothing.
   

 

Besides, if you look at the topic sentences in 1-5 again, I think you'll agree that the bishops of the world already knew that.
 

What did Cardinal Ratzinger write that I failed to mention? Check out the 20 footnotes: 19 references are to letters written by John Paul II. Of the rest, 2 are from the CDF, and 1 each from 3 Saints. Not one Academic paper is cited. No scholarly articles are mentioned. Obviously, no research at all was conducted.
 

What did Cardinal Ratzinger leave out? Everything that a competent scholar and teacher would have included on such an important document from such an important source. There is absolutely no mention of one, single woman theologian or scholar, not one. He made no contact with scientists, theologians, doctors, academic deans, professors emeriti, learned scholars, government experts, authors, poets, ordinary men and ordinary women. He examined no sources in Philosophy, Theology, Sociology, Psychiatry, Family Studies, Women's' Studies, Men's Studies, Anthropology, Fertility, the History of Civilization. There is no treatment of Inalienable Rights of the Dignity of the Human Person, be she Female or he Male; Common Courtesy; Decency; Respect; Love.
 

The recommendation is to withdraw it from publication as soon as possible with an abject apology that it was probably lost with the composition notebook of a high school sophomore and got found in a bundle at the Vatican Press printing house. Then, the CDF should retain a woman theologian or woman scholar from another discipline to help them open their eyes and see what is directly in front of them: the people of God. Some of us are men. The rest are women. We are equals. We love each other and share with each other. A lot. Each of us is very comfortable with Jesus as Our Lord, as He is with us. We are real people, gentlemen, real people. We are the Church. We are the People of God.
 

The cardinal and his CDF should be told, simply, directly, that this letter of theirs is the poorest piece of writing a lot of us have ever seen. We are quite worried about the CDF and its other activities. For a Church beset from within by the sexual abuse of minors by clergy, the criminal conduct of bishops and other hierarchs, the filing of bankruptcies, the grip of litigation, both civil and criminal; the stonewalling silence of Ordinaries to the people in their dioceses; sexcapades in their seminaries and rectories and convents and monasteries all over the world; the competition among bishops to see who can exclude more from the Eucharist; the drill instructor commands that lay ministers sign documents of Agreements or resign; this letter on collaboration by men and women is an abomination.
 

The letter is harmful to the dignity of persons and to the good of the community.

 

The grade for the letter is F.
 

-end-

Vox et Praeterea Nihil – A Voice and Besides That Nothing

It is obvious, to me anyway, that I am not competent to judge anyone running for public office on his/her character, antecedents, race, color, creed, friends, or how the ladder was climbed, any more than those who have written about those factors. Like my friends, I listen to my gut when it gurgles, and have a hard time changing initial impressions, those first ones that are more often than not lasting. In my lifetime of work, I found it relatively easy to speak during depositions or in a courtroom, be it a jury or non-jury trial, or on the appellate level, when and if prepared. Once the bathtub of my mind was filled with the case and its issues, the words came. I had prepared yellow pads with notes, but almost never referred to them while clambering to my feet.

In later life, when writing became the way for me to communicate --- no live audiences around in the apartment and the soap boxes were gone from the public parks --- the same thing happened: words came, if and when I was prepared, and came better, if and when they were edited, rewritten, rewritten, honed, deleted, toned down, practices absent from the oral life led before retirement. Often, I was not prepared but yacked on anyway, and in writing, often did I send out what had been written as quickly as the thoughts tumbled out, even without a spell-check. On those many occasions, it was evident to me that I was: Vox et praeterea nihil ---A voice and besides that nothing.

As a lawyer, it was so easy for me to find our antecedents in the ancient Sophists, the speakers, the advocates for whomever: a mind quick enough to grasp the issues and a tongue glib enough to spill out the solution favored by the client, regardless of which solution was favored. A lawyer friend of mine was accosted by the Chief Justice during an appellate argument, "Brother, you said just the opposite last week in another case. Which one do you wish us to follow?"  My friend answered, "I am an advocate. For clients. You are judges. It's up to you to decide." I think that later he said, "You win one, you lose one."

To me, about myself, when aware of the flow of words, I could always sense whether it was Prepared advocate or Vox et praeterea nihil. The former was OK, sometimes with an authentic ring of sincerity and earnestness mingling with the timbre of the voice. The latter was glib, shallow, gilt, based often on what I had assumed the audience wished to hear, and just as often sickening to the speaker, me. Knowing my own vox et praeterea nihil so well, I always found it relatively easy to spot its tone and the rush of its words in another. Gilt is not gold. Glib is not pondered. Shallow has no depth.

I see and hear that in and from Barack Obama, my gut tells me so. And lately I have begun to hear the gurgle groan into a growl when he shows an adept ability to attack opponents, whether ad mulierem for the other gender
or ad hominem for an older man. His honed skills show by simultaneously denying that personal attacks are being simultaneously uttered, because vox et praeterea nihil often requires two tongues for double-speak, three for innuendo, and four to keep up the impression of being on the high road, above us all.

As of now, our choices for President are three. In the fall, there will be but two. Next January, the horror of the Fall and Decline of the United States of America may be arrested, even reversed, depending on the Vox and our gut's reaction to it.