What Would Hildegard Do? Some Thoughts on the Latest Attack from the Vatican, this on American Sisters

My first response on being invited to write an article on the Silencing of Sisters in the Roman Catholic Church was: “Why? They are fully capable of defending themselves.” Yet I also know, from my own personal experience in my years of being silenced and then expelled by then Cardinal Ratzinger from my religious order in which I was “in good standing” for 34 years (and then lied about), that solidarity matters. It matters not just to an individual in the midst of an ordeal but also to others who stand under the gun and wonder if their taking stands of conscience will isolate them or bring on support and solidarity. (Interestingly, feminist theologian Dorothy Soelle says solidarity is the opposite of servile obedience.) So I have squelched my inhibitions about letting the sisters go it alone to jump into the fray and offer whatever support I can to my sisters.

The same weekend that I was invited to write this article I met a woman in her sixties who told me she had been a Catholic sister for a number of years in the Order of Saint Joseph and her response to the attacks on Catholic sisters was this: “Now they will be called to stand up and be counted like so many of us over the years who had to make decisions of conscience on our own. Just like you and many theologians also had to do. No more denial.” It is not only sister orders who can no longer deny the darkness that has taken over the Catholic Church at this time in history. Lay people too who support and rely on the sisters whether in fields of education or pastoral ministry or as examplars of Christians trying to live out the values of Vatican II about justice and solidarity with the poor — all have to move beyond denial and stand up and be counted with the sisters now under siege from the Vatican. Meister Eckhart tells us: “God is the denial of denial.”

I have laid out the stakes of this struggle in the Catholic Church in my recent book,The Pope’s War: How Ratzinger’s Crusade has Imperiled the Church and What Can Be Saved. There I try to present the last forty years of Catholic Church history and make the case that the Vatican and its bureaucrats are in fact in schism since they have abandoned the values and principles of Vatican II across the board (from national bishops’ conferences, to lay leadership, to freedom of conscience, to openness with theologians, to deep ecumenism and more). This is schism, since in the church’s tradition a Council trumps popes and not the other way around. What this means practically is that all the cardinals, bishops and priests anointed in the past forty years are invalid and not to be believed or followed. The door is open for a LOT of creativity and work of the Holy Spirit to flow anew into Christian history.

The case for schism is not just about the abandonment of Vatican II and its saintly movements and individuals such as Oscar Romero, Bishop Casigalida, Bishop Arns, thousands of church workers tortured and killed in Brazil, Peru and more but also the 101 theologians silenced and often expelled from their teaching vocations. It is also about the perverse persons and ideologies embraced by the past two papacies include Fr Maciel, so close to Pope John Paul II that he accompanied him on plane rides to Latin America, who raised more money than anyone in church history but who also sexually abused over twenty of his seminarians and had two common law wives on the side by whom he fathered four children whom he also sexually abused (3 boys and a girl). This man and his order, eagerly supportive of the dictator Pinochet and other far-right movements, was protected and highlighted by the past two papacies (only under pressure did Pope Benedict XVI, having neglected to investigate him when it was his job to do so at the Congregation of Fatih, finally order a full investigation and call for an examination of his order). There is also the scary Opus Dei movement, given full support and ecclesial carte blanche under these two schismatic papacies who rushed the founder, fascist priest and admirer of Hitler, Fr. Escriva, into canonization on a fast track never before equalled. The greatest spy in American history who now sits in jail for getting more American spies murdered than any one before him, was a devout Opus Dei member who went undetected in his post at the FBI for over twenty years. How many members of today’s Supreme Court are Opus Dei? It is hard to know since they are nothing if not secretive but the general guess is 3 or 4. Citizens United decision correctly names their philosophy of marriage of government and corporations (Mussolini’s very definition of fascism).

This is all to lay out the context of the sisters’ condemnation. One must realize that we are suffering through the most corrupt papacies since the Borgias. To the sisters now under fire, I say “Congratulations! You are in good company. Welcome to the club of thinking and caring Catholics trying to apply the principles and values of our faith who have also been attacked for doing so by so-called leaders of the church.” When I was expelled by the Dominicans I received a letter from poet Bill Everson (former Dominican Brother Antoninus) that said: “Congratulations for this culmination of your vocation.” He was right to put the ordeal in the context of vocation. Vocation is our original calling, that which invited us to take a path less traveled. To have followed that path in spite of history’s detours is a noble act. To all the sisters affected by this Vatican attack, I say: “Congratulations! Your vocation is calling you still.”

Some questions I put to the sisters are these:

1. What kind of support do you expect or can you expect from male religious orders? Will they have the courage to stand by you in solidarity? Or will they slink away in a fit of self-preservation to hide and not be heard from? Will they continue in their denial? Or will they finally stand up and be counted and stand by you?
   
   
2. What options are you considering? Are you going to “let the dead bury the dead” and move on, continuing your works of service outside any technical connection with Rome? Will you join the Ecumenical Catholic Church? Have you hired good lawyers to help you with property issues?
   
   
3. Do you think it is worth the trouble and bother and time and energy drain to fight to stay in the Roman Catholic Church as it is now constittued at the top and to try to get “permission” to continue your vocation from the sick and schismatic hierarchy of today?
   
   
4. Do you think Hildegard of Bingen (scheduled to be declared a saint and doctor of the church in October) speaks for you when she writes to the pope of her day: “O man, the eye of your discernment weakens. You are becoming weary, too tired to restrain the arrogant boastfulness of people to whom you have entrusted your heart. Why do you not call these shipwrecked people back? You are neglecting Justice, the King’s daughter, the heavenly bride, the woman who was entrusted to you. Her crown and jeweled raiments are torn to pieces through the moral crudeness of men who bark like dogs and make stupid sounds like chickens which sometimes begin to cackle in the middle of the night. They are hypocrites. With their words they make a show of illusory peace, but within, in their hearts, they grind their teeth like a dog who wags its tail at a recognized friend but bites with its sharp teeth an experienced warrior who fights for the King’s house. Why do you tolerate the evil ways of people who, in the darkness of foolishness, draw everything harmful to themselves? They are like hens who make noise during the night and terrify themselves…. People who act like this aren’t rooted in goodness.” What a marvelous picture of the curia in the 21st century!
   
   She goes on: “You should be doing battle with evil, but that is precisely what you aren’t doing, when you don’t dig out by the root that evil which suffocates the good. And why not? Because of your fear of the evil men who lay snares in nocturnal ambush and love the gold of death more than the beautiful King’s daughter, Justice.”
   
   “O man, you who sit on the papal throne, you despise God when you don’t hurl from yourself the evil, but even worse, embrace it and kiss it by silently tolerating corrupt men. The whole earth is in confusion on account of the ever-recurring false teaching whereby human beings love what God has brought, to nothing. And you, O Rome, are like one in the throes of death.”
   
   “You will be so shaken that the strength of your feet, the feet on which you now stand, will disappear. For you don’t love the King’s daughter, Justice….but as in delirium of sleep, so that you push her away from you. That is why she will flee from you, unless you call her back. And you, O man, who have been placed as a visible shepherd, rise up and hasten quickly to Justice, so that you will not be criticized by the great Doctor for not having cleansed your flock from dirt, for not having anointed them with oil.”
   
   In a letter to Abbot Hellinger she writes: “Now listen and learn, so that you blush with shame when you taste in your soul what I now say. Sometimes you have the style of a bear, who often grumbles to itself in secret. Sometimes you have the style of an ass, for you aren’t solicitous in your duties but are glum and in many ways bungling as well.” He’s glum and bungling! “To such behavior the heavenly Father gives an answer: ‘Your heart grumbles over my Justice. You don’t seek the right answer in her, but you harbor in yourself a certain grumbling like that of the bear.’” [These citations are from her letters and found in Matthew Fox, ed., Hildegard of Bingen's Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs, Bear & Co., 1987.]
   
   
5. How is all this internal struggle strengthening your true vocation?
   
   
6. How are you feeling about the Vatican at this time in history?
   
   
7. Two proposals do come to my mind. Since it is not you who have been accused of pedophilia or of covering up pedophilia, are you considering undertaking your own investgation of hierarchy both in Rome and in the United States who have stood by while countencing priestly pedophilia? And who now are publicly attacking SNAP which exists to defend the victims of such childhood horrors and which is directed by former victims of priestly pedophilia?
   
   
8. And while you are at it, why not demand that the Vatican define “radical feminism” since Cardinal Ratzinger has been getting away with such scurilous and sloppy language for decades (in fact, he accused me of the identical offense without defining his terms when he expelled me).
   

I would be happy to invite any Catholic sister who wishes to write me their answers to these questions—I promise COMPLETE anonymity—and I will try to publish them in a follow-up to this article.

Finally, I have just one sentence of advice: Wear this badge of honor, this joining the 101 theologians and church activists who have also been denounced by radical right wing groups who hide in the Vatican canonizing one another, with humility. I am sure you will. I offer you as a gift the following poem:

It is not enough that Opus Dei occupies three to four seats in the US Supreme Court,

It is not enough that one (or two) of its admirers ran for president on the Republican ticket,

It is not enough that one (Bishop Finn) engaged in sexual cover up of a priest after pledging not to,

It is not enough that one occupies the largest diocese in North America (Los Angeles),

It is not enough that denial of contraception and other proof of wars against women and their bodies is countenced by schismatic popes,

It is not enough that pedophile priests and bishops are covered up for by hierarchy,

It is not enough that GBLT persons are bullied by schismatic popes and their sycophant bishops,

It is not enough that ecumenism is dead in the water,

It is not enough that yoga is condemned and that Thich Naht Hahn has been declared an “anti-Christ” by the Vatican,

It is not enough that women are excluded from priesthood and from leadership in the church,

It is not enough that 101 theologians have been silenced, abused, expelled for doing their job in service of the People,

It is not enough that theology is dead in the water and the only teacher left is the “magisterium,” i.e. the bureaucrats in the Vatican,

It is not enough that fear grips all theologians and priests,

It is not enough that the Vatican is in bed with dictators and with CIA, FBI, Pentegon and more,

Now cometh the latest trumpet call from the guardians of stale orthodoxy and sinful papalolotry: An attack on American religious sisters, those who have lived and led with the values of Vatican II.

May you all be blessed and thanked for your work, your generosity and your faithfulness to Gospel values. May your consciences take the lead in the creative responses you are sure to be invoking.[br}

Gratefully and in the Spirit of Hildegard,

Your brother,

Matthew Fox, oops (Once of the Order of Preachers)

Some Thoughts on Occupy and Creation Spirituality

I have visited Occupy Boston, Oakland, New York, Ashville, San Francisco.  There is much to like about the people I have met there ranging from 20-somethings to sixty-somethings.  A 58 year old in Boston told me he was camping out because he had been unemployed for over two years; a 30 something in New York told me he was there “because of Jesus who teaches him that the poor get to heaven, not the rich.”  On Wall Street this past weekend I watched two lines of exuberant young adults playing “Rover, red rover” literally in the middle of Wall Street while police cordoned off the entrance to the street.  Nice to see some fun enacted in the name of social change.  I very much appreciated two very large canvases on a side of a building at Occupy Boston: One was entitled, “What is Good about America” and the second was entitled: “What is bad about America.”  Everyone was invited to write on the pages. I read all the entries and they were moving and thoughtful.  I liked the balance that was invited forth to everyone to express their opinions.  In Oakland one day of protests brought out about 7000 people of all ages and ethnicities, mothers with babies in strollers, a flash mob dance of about 80 people well appreciated by hundreds of observers, a band playing as we marched through the city center streets.  My favorite sign?  “I will believe corporations are people when the state of Texas executes one.”

Results have already been significant.  The language of the economic debate in America has shifted from “the deficit is everything” to the matter of justice and injustice—rare words to enter American political discourse the past two decades (though Obama shies away from the words and prefers “fairness”).  A New York Occupy person told me “already Governor Cuomo has learned something and is seeking $2 billion in new taxes from the richest among us.”

More important than immediate “results” and even a change of language and perception is the bearing of witness that is going on.  The bearing of witness against Wall Street’s greed and arrogance, its willingness to borrow trillions of dollars from Main Street but offer nothing in return but more foreclosures, more bankruptcies, more excess, more CEO privileges and more greed.  I have written about greed quite extensively in my book on evil, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Lessons for Transforming Soul and Society. Returning to that book recently, I have to say I was pleased with the teachings that are there.  Greed corresponds to the fifth or throat chakra (“gluttony” comes from the Latin word for “throat”).  Greed interferes with self-expression, stuffing excess things down the throat instead of eliciting wisdom from the inside with the throat as the birth canal.  The fact that 70% of the American economy runs on consumerism is proof positive that consuming is the newest form of gluttony and such gluttony feeds greed and vice versa.  As Aquinas warned, “avarice tends to infinity”—there is no end to a consciousness of greed or its ally, consumerism.  Henry Ford was once asked: “When do you have enough money?”  His response: “When you always have a little bit more.”  So with consumerism.  It never ends.  It is infinite.  Ask Donald Trump.

If Occupy accomplished this alone it would be revolutionary: To educate Americans and others that an economy that runs 70% on consumption and on greed has to reinvent itself.  It is not spiritually or materially sustainable.  We can do better than consumer capitalism.

In the matter of reinventing economics, I never tire of recommending David Korten who I feel is the most profound and most relevant teacher of an “economics that works for everyone”—not just for 1% of the people but for all the earth’s people including the more than two legged ones.  Korten has done his homework about ecology and cosmology as well as about economics and ethics.  He knows of what he speaks when he shows the way to our reinventing economics so that it serves the earth and all her creatures and therefore future generations as well.  Go to Yes magazine web site to see his many articles on the current economic crisis as well as to his books.

Another aspect of the Occupy movement that moves me is its bearing witness to moral bankruptcy.  The banks are very willing to condemn plenty of us to financial bankruptcy at this time of high unemployment and intransigence in refinancing home loans and business loans, for example.  But they are the carriers of a Moral Bankruptcy that needs calling out.  Speaking truth to power (the economic power elites who brought the economy crashing down on us all) is what prophets do.  Occupy is prophetic.  They are daring to interfere with the economic status quo.

There is courage involved in Occupy as there is in all those movements in the Middle East that we attribute to the Arab Spring.  It takes courage and endurance to sleep in the parks and even on the concrete as so many Occupiers have done (including the 68 year old woman I met in Boston!) and to face police harassment.  Courage is, in my opinion, the number one sign of Spirit.  Without courage there is no Spirit.  There is Spirit afoot in Occupy.

There is hope also because of Occupy.  David Orr says, “hope is a verb with the sleeves rolled up” and those in Occupy are doing something.  How important is that?  Doing something, bearing witness, instead of just getting depressed or angry and sitting on it while addicting oneself to more TV or eating or whatever.  Putting one’s moral outrage to action, tapping into anger as an energy source.  All good.  Tea partiers great success has derived from the anger they tapped into.  While I find their solutions short sighted, their energy has made a difference and Occupy’s can do the same—with much sounder solutions.

Part of Occupy’s success has been its appeal to television.  In this post-modern time television is the primary medium for reaching peoples’ heart and minds and the very act of sleeping outdoors has attracted the cameras that have in turned allowed fresh stories to be passed around.  Stories about values.  Social media is part of this post-modern political movement obviously also.  And the effort to reinvent community through democratic means of listening to all and not just the powerful and ego-driven ones.

Now of course Occupiers are not allowed to encamp or sleep out in most cities but that only means that the means of expression are morphing.  More and more Occupy is focusing on foreclosed houses and trying to raise consciousness about that.  In New York I was told that $400,000 still remains in the kitty they have raised and that all of that is going toward housing for the poor and bringing attention to the plight of the unemployed.  The movement is evolving and morphing as anything living does. In Oakland evicted persons are occupying boarded up and foreclosed homes putting them to use.

Occupy is raising consciousness about the big banks, the “too big to fail” profiteers.  Many are the people moving their money to credit unions (I am one of them and I am happy I did that).

When I preached recently in a Unity church in New York City a woman came up afterwards and started to cry.  She said: “I have been supporting Occupy in every way I can bringing food and warm clothes and more but so few of my friends get the point.  They are just living their lives as if this doesn’t matter.  And where are the clergy?  I hardly see them at all.  But to me this movement is about everything Jesus taught us about loving our neighbor.  There are so many people suffering today.  Your talk inspired me to keep going.”

Recently I wrote a book on The Pope’s War which lays bare much of the sickness within the Roman Catholic Church at this time in history, a sickness that panders to sexual abusers as well as to dictators like Pinochet who tortured and murdered thousands and to fascist movements like Opus Dei, Legion of Christ and Communion and Liberation, a sickness that has silenced or expelled over 100 theologians while supporting the movements just mentioned that between them produce armies of canon lawyers and not a single theologian.  The emasculation of Liberation Theology and base communities was a program enacted by the present and previous popes.

Of course not all priests who work in the Roman Catholic church are child molesters nor are all hierarchy busy hiding and protecting them.  So too not all bankers and all financiers who work with Wall Street are crooks.  But both systems are practicing moral nothingness and condoning it so staying in the system and not critiquing carries with it the risk of being an accomplice, however distant, to the system.  Leaving it makes more obvious moral sense but if one chooses to stay you must stay as a critic and with one’s conscience in tact and operating to change the system.  One stays not as a cheerleader to the system and not to profit from it while taking no moral position.  There is no room in a moral crisis whether of economics or of sexual predation for putting one’s conscience on a shelf and hiding either in the pew or in the boardroom.  It is time to stand up and be counted and support those who are so doing.  It is a time for moral courage.  Thank God for Occupy!

News from the Creation Spirituality Front in Oakland

Dear Friends of CS,

Holiday Greetings to you all!  Many thanks to all those who are carrying on the work and vision of the movement/tradition from Mary Plaster in Duluth to Susan Coppage Evans in Boulder to Diane Wolverton in Wyoming and many, many more.  (Can’t mention you all.)

A few words from my Oakland base.  Here are some things going on.

My two books that came out this Spring are stirring things up a bit.  Christian Mystics just received an award as “one of the best spiritual books of 2011” from Library Journal. The Pope’s War is coming out in paperback in the Spring and is already out in German.  The translator wrote me that she “cried often” while translating it because her generation (she is in her forties) was promised “never again, no more fascism” and that the book proves fascism is back in the church and especially through the German wing of the church.  This book is a “bomb” she says and Germans need to read it.  Reviews coming in from Germany, all of them positive.  Others have told me the “book is a page-turner—I stayed up two nights in a row to finish it” they say.  A number of positive and thoughtful reviews in the US too.

Susan Coppage Evans and I launched a series of CS retreats this Fall in Boulder, Co., based on the Four Paths.  September event was Via Positiva with Mary Oliver as our guide.  I loved working more deeply on Oliver’s wonderful poetry and had the privilege of seeing her in person deliver a reading and q and a in San Francisco ten days before our retreat.  In January we are doing the Via Negativa with Eckhart as our guide.  Later we will do Via Creativa with Hildegard as our guide and then the Via Transformativa with Howard Thurman as our guide.  Spread the word!  www.wholeheartedretreat.com Lots of good practice stuff going on with Susan leading that and I offering in-put on the various subjects and guides.

I am very grateful to Mary Plaster for carrying the torch with a facebook page with my name on it.  Thank you, Mary, and Congratulations too for the wonderful work you are doing with theater pieces and puppets galore!

Mel and I have been working diligently to rescue some of the wonderful articles and interviews from Creation Spirituality Magazine from its very first issue to its very last.  We are putting these on its own web page very soon and access will be free.  I was excited and pleased to see how many great articles were written and interviews offered over its 13 year history—articles that are still very relevant.  (I was also amazed to see how many I had written, just about one per issue).  Authors or Interviewees range from Jerry Brown to Buck Ghosthorse, from Joanna Macy to Bill Everson, from Jeremy Taylor (a regular) to Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, from Charlene Spretnak to Starhawk and many, many more.  Thanks and kudos to all the editors over the years of the cs magazine.  It is nice to revisit it at this time in my life.

Nicole Porcaro has been working diligently on putting together a Manual for the Cosmic Mass and I have been overseeing the project.  She is drawing on the documents that Debra Martin brought together for her Manual when teaching the course on the TCM at the Ballroom plus history plus more.  We hope to have that Manual on line by February.  (Nicole is getting married in early January!  Send your blessings her way!)

Beginning in January and with the hard work of Diane Wolverton we are launching a teleconference course on “Mystics: Pioneers of Consciousness” taught weekly for 10 weeks (first week free) by yours truly.  We are hoping this will be a first “out of the gate” experience for starting an on-line teaching experience that is global and that is using the latest in technology that insures interaction among students and teacher as well.  You can go to www.CSourcewisdom.com.  Spread the word please!  Maybe we are resurrecting UCS in this teleconference format making it much cheaper and more accessible than ever before.  We shall see how it evolves.

I am working hard with Adam Bucko of NYC who is co-founder of “The Reciprocity Foundation” (see www.reciprocityfoundation.org) who has been working with street youth in NYC for six years.  We are writing a book together in dialog form about young adults and spirituality, have handed out lots of surveys and have also interviewed on film about twenty interesting young adults from Bay Area to Boulder to North Carolina to NYC.  So we are creating a film project as well.  We expect to have the book completed by February and the film later this year.

The work with Yellawe goes very strong in Chicago where Ted Richards is active with three Chicago versions of the project called “The Chicago Wisdom Project.”  (He is also commuting to NYC to work with New Seminary there).  In Oakland we have linked YELLAWE up with Kokomon Clottey’s project, “Art Esteem” and his and Aeesha’s Attitudinal Healing Project this Fall.  This month it morphs from an afterschool program at McClymonds high school to being an accredited afternoon in-school program and we all see that as a plus.

I am still on the road a lot with lectures, workshops and preaching.  And some Cosmic Masses in the works also.  I will be going to England and Scotland in the Spring for a series of lectures.  I remain very grateful to Aaron Stern and the Academy of the Love of Learning for their support and mutual work and vision. www.aloveoflearning.org Their new building in Santa Fe is a stunner and fully Leeds approved and above all full of wonderful activities.

I have been seeing more of Brian Swimme lately and share his joy that his life’s work of putting the “Journey of the Universe” to film is now getting a great hearing by being on so many PBS stations this season.  Surely Tom Berry is blessing the project.

I am currently writing an article on the Occupy Movement, a movement which I have great hopes for.  I have visited Occupy in Boston, NY, Ashville, Boulder, Oakland.  Lots of cs energy and principles there!  I will make the article available on line shortly.

A high point for me this year was going to Rome for the launch of the Italian version of my “Original Blessing” book—they launched it on the anniversary of Giordano Bruno’s burning at the stake in Rome in 1600 (he too was a Dominican and keen on spirituality in science).  A well known Italian philosopher wrote a very rich Introduction to the book (which is now in its fifth printing) and an Italian publisher is committed to publishing “The Pope’s War” and also “Creativity” (which is being translated by a fellow in Florence—seems like the perfect city).  While in Rome I posted an Italian translation of my 95 theses at Cardinal Law’s basilica on a Sunday morning.  Much drama with the Vatican police there in street clothing leading the attacks.  We, not they, remained non violent.

So that kind of brings you up to date from Oakland.  If you have some money to contribute to a still very viable non-profit called FCS, don’t hesitate to do so. www.mcssl.com/store/matthewfoxorg/books/donation If you don’t I fully understand.  You can help other ways by spreading the word and maybe stirring up some lecture invitations or pushing books or courses such as our on-line ones, etc.  And many thanks to Dennis for his continued and dogged work contributions to FCS—and to Dominic Flamiano too for his legal assistance.

Blessings on your Holidays and New Year Days for 2012!

Grateful for all you Be and Do,

Matthew Fox

“The Pope’s War” Book Reviews from Germany

Matthew Fox’s “The Pope’s War” came out in German in September. Below are three reviews from Germany about the book. An Italian version should be released next year.

Much Truth and Insights into Ratzinger’s Style of Leadership: A Review from Germany

M. Plotzki

This book is a must-read for every Catholic and interested Christian because it points out Ratzinger’s schemings and his way of fraudulently concealing facts in clear and factual language without becoming spiteful or biased.  (My compliments to the translator for the excellent translation.)

The book explains a “theology of obedience” that affects our every day lives.  A theology that conceals crimes against children and teenagers, deliberately keeps them secret and even shields, protects and promotes the bishops and cardinals involved.  Ratzinger argues for compassion where openness and justice should be called for. Is this an “intact theology.” one that can reach people and is open and willing to reform?

This book, that I highly recommend to every interested and questioning person, raises serious concerns in me and stirs me up.  As a former member of the Roman Catholic Church, I too belong to those Christians who lament the deterioration of a society that with this behavior sees itself deprived of another one of its supports.  The great amount of people leaving this institution point the same way.

Here and all over the world we find many examples showing how the Vatican operates–Ratzinger has silenced good theologians who had been teaching inspiring, stimulating messages – for instance in the issue of women’s rights – that could bring change. This has been done by dismissing them from the church against their own will.  This book explains the background and mechanisms involved in these cases. Matthew Fox, for whom I wish many readers for his book, belongs to this group of theologians compromised by the Vatican.

Perhaps this book will lead to an enhanced exchange between its readers, so that together we can focus on these grievances!  That would be desirable! As always change can only be brought about when we ourselves as members of our society become active and express ourselves!

Clarification and Truth About Ratzinger: A Review from Germany

Bernd Wagenbach, director of studies (retired)

Helga Simon-Wagenbach

For a long time I have critically studied the history of the church and vigilantly watched the scandalous ideas and activities from Ratzinger that have nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus. Of all the publications dealing with these problems, the outstanding book “Ratzinger und sein Kreuzzug”(in English, “The Pope’s War”) by Matthew Fox is particularly worth reading.

It contains very interesting information about the current pope including some that is to this point unknown and appalling – for example information concerning Opus Dei and the Legion of Christ.  Such an extraordinary and thrilling book as this, that serves the purpose of clarification and truth, should be warmly recommended like hardly any other!  It most definitely deserves a much larger dissemination.

Pope Benedict XVI– A Man of War and a “Murderer”of Theology? A Review from Germany

Roland R. Ropers

philosopher of religion and publicist

The American theologian and former Dominican Monk Matthew Fox, who is known worldwide, describes with brilliant clarity Ratzinger’s thirty year long dictatorship in the Vatican and his part in the cover-up of pedophile scandals and inquisition-like crusades against a large number of theologians and spiritual teachers who don’t conform to his political views and his course back into the religious Dark Ages.

It is obvious that Joseph Ratzinger has exchanged his soul for power.  Matthew Fox refers to Pope Benedict XVI as a “murderer of theology” and a “man of war.”  The current book of the now 71 year old professor of Creation Spirituality is appalling and illustrates how fraudulent and far from Christ the institution of the Roman-Catholic “faith corporation” has been steered.

At the end of his diagnosis Matthew Fox, among other things, points out 25 tangible steps for the revitalization of Christian communities.  Everyone who still relies on Pope Benedict and the cardinals, bishops and priests enslaved by him should very attentively read this book. It is about the urgently needed revolution of spirituality.

The Other Side of the Catholic Tradition

(A shortened version of this article appeared in The Washington Post 061411:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/the-other-side-of-the-catholic-tradition/2011/06/14/AGQuyeUH_blog.html)

People who came of age in the past forty years have known only one version of the Roman Catholic Church—a version of an iron-fisted ideology that first a Polish pope and then a German pope have enforced in the process of condemning liberation theology, creation spirituality, women, gays, the “secular world,” and much more.  Not only all bishop-making has accrued to the Vatican headquarters but also all teaching, calling itself the only “magisterium” or teaching arm of the church to whom all must kneel or get out.  Since “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, as Catholic historian Lord Acton observed on hearing of the declaration of Papal Infallibility in the nineteenth century, we have also seen of late immense corruption in the way the hierarchy has and has not responded to pedophile clergy and in the way it has denounced theologians and others who bring ideas to an age-old tradition.

But looking at the long and varied history of the church one gets a different impression.  Diversity and pitched battles abound before the time of instantaneous heresy hunting made possible by faxes, phones and emails changed the rules of the game.  Back when it took mail weeks and months to go back and forth by horseback and river boat, much gestated that was creative.  Let me offer a few examples.

In twelfth century Germany, the Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen, author of ten books, the first opera of the West, dozens of songs, and a healer, awakened popes and abbots alike, firing off letters that would make a Cardinal blush with shame in our day.  Her favorite topic when she preached all around Europe (Yes, a woman preached!) was the laxity of priests.  She writes of a vision of a “very beautiful lady,” who is the church who speaks thus to Hildegard: “This fact, that the wounds of Christ remain open, is the fault of priests.  For they are the ones who are supposed to make me radiantly pure and serve me in purity; but instead in their limitless greed they move from church to church in their practice of simony.  And even my robe is torn thereby, for they are violators of the law, of the gospel, and of their priestly duty…..They cover my face with dust, tear my robe, and make my cloak dark, and my shows black….They do not adhere to the straight ways, that is, to the hard and rough ways of justice.” (329f)

In a letter to Abbot Helenger who complained to her of dryness in his vocation, she offers this advice: “Sometimes you have the style of a bear who often grumbles to itself in secret; sometimes you have the style of an ass, for you aren’t solicitous in your duties but are glum and in many things bungling as well….. (303f)

And to Pope Anastasius IV she wrote these blunt words: “O man, the eye of your discernment weakens; you are becoming weary, too tired to restrain the arrogant boastfulness of people to whom you have trusted your hearts.  Why do you not call these shipwrecked people back? And why do you not cut out the roots of the evil which chokes out the good?  You are neglecting justice, the King’s daughter, the heavenly bride, the woman who was entrusted to you.  You are even tolerant that this princess be hurled to the ground.   Her crown and jeweled raiments are torn to pieces through the moral crudeness of men who bark like dogs and make stupid sounds like chickens which sometimes begin to cackle in the middle of the night.  They are hypocrites ….Therefore, O man, you who sit on the papal throne, you despise God when you don’t hurl from yourself the evil but even worse, embrace it and kiss it by silently tolerating corrupt men.  The whole Earth is in confusion on account of the ever recurring false teaching whereby human beings love what God has brought to nothing.  And you, O Rome, are like one in the throes of death.  You will be so shaken that the strength of your feet, the feet on which you now stand, will disappear.  For you don’t love the King’s daughter, justice.”  (273ff)

In addition to criticizing churchmen, Hildegard composed marvelous music (I call it “erotic Gregorian chant”) and poems, painted over 40 mandalas that we still possess, wrote ten books including books on trees and stones and medicine.  She has been accredited with discovering vitamins and the need to boil and purify water.  She says “all science comes from God” and taught that the Cosmic Christ or Divine Wisdom lived in every being (“there is no creature that lacks an interior life”).  She wrote: “I, the fiery life of divine wisdom, I ignite the beauty of the plains, I sparkle the waters, I burn in the sun, and the moon, and the stars.”   She was a Renaissance woman.

Thomas Aquinas followed a century after Hildegard and just after Francis of Assisi.  Aquinas was a genius of the first order whose intellectual output has rarely been equaled.  He died at 49 (the last year of his life he was struck dumb and neither wrote nor talked) but he wrote numerous works including commentaries on ten of the works of the greatest scientist of his day, Aristotle, who was being translated in Muslim learning centers in Baghdad for really the first time.  Aquinas said he preferred Aristotle to Plato because Aristotle “did not denigrate matter.”  A pope had forbidden Christians to study Aristotle but thanks to an Irish professor in Naples (a stone’s throw from the pope), who put scholarship ahead of obedience, Aquinas was introduced to Aristotle as a young man at the newly born University of Naples.  Aquinas committed his life to integrating Aristotle into Christianity—a direct affront against the fundamentalists of his day (and ours) who prefer Plato’s dualistic matter vs. spirit rap that appealed to Augustine and forms the basis of the Catholic Church’s teachings on birth control and homophobia to this day.  (Augustine said that all sex must be justified by having children.)   So controversial was Aquinas in his day that at one point the king of France had to call out his troops to surround the convent where Aquinas lived to protect him from…Christians aroused by fundamentalist clergy who insisted that believers did not need the science of “pagan Aristotle” since they had all their answers in the Bible.  For Aquinas, “revelation comes in two books—the Bible and Nature” and “a mistake about nature results in a mistake about God.”  Thus, the importance of science and scientists.

Aquinas rejected Augustine’s “introspective conscience” in favor of a cosmic perspective as when he says: “Every human being is ‘capax universi,’ capable of the universe.”  And again, “all beings love on another,” and “the order of the universe is the ultimate and noblest perfection in things.”  Aquinas says “joy is the human being’s noblest act” and he endorsed conscience in a big way, saying that one is always responsible to one’s conscience, more than to any other authority.  (Indeed, Dr. Martin Luther King jr. cites Aquinas on this point in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail—Aquinas as a basis of civil disobedience.  We are to obey conscience, not necessarily man-made laws.)  Aquinas was condemned by church authorities three times after he died but eventually he was declared a saint.  Carl Jung has said that by bringing scholasticism from Islam to the West he inaugurated the beginnings of modern science since scholasticism was a method for learning that emphasized questions and answers over recitations of past “authorities.”  To the credit of the Dominicans, they protected their brother against the ire aroused by his forward-thinking teachings.

Another Dominican, Meister Eckhart, came right after Aquinas and he stood on his shoulders becoming the most important preacher in Europe.  He is probably the greatest mystic the West has produced and his writing abound with depth, humor, paradox and challenges to establishment Christianity.  For example, he declares, “I pray God to rid me of God” and he emphasizes what contemporary Biblical scholars are saying, that Christ is found not just in Jesus but in all of us.  Eckhart says, “What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the son of God 1400 years ago and I do not do so in my time and my person and my culture?”  And again, “we are all meant to be mothers of God.”  He declares that “the highest work of God is compassion” and that “compassion means justice,” in fact, “compassion is where peace and justice kiss.”  Eckhart was condemned by Pope John XXII a week after he died.  It was reading Eckhart that converted Thomas Merton from a dualistic monk of the 1950’s to a prophetic mystic of the 60’s.

Today’s eco-prophet, the late Thomas Berry (a priest in the Passionist Order and author of The Dream of the Earth, The Great Work and The Universe Story with Brian Swimme), often talked of how much he owed his twin mentors, Thomas Aquinas and Teilhard de Chardin.  Chardin was a French Jesuit mystic and scientist who was banished from his home country to China early in the twentieth century but who found plenty of scientific and mystical work to delve into in his exile.  He spent his life researching the deeper meanings of science and spirituality and, being forbidden to publish most of his works in his life time, he left his books in the hands of a woman (not to his Order) who got them published shortly after he died.

A fifteenth century scientist, mystic and cardinal in the church, Nicolas of Cusa, taught that “every face is a reflection of the One Face,” that is of God.  He called for deep ecumenism saying that while we call ourselves by many religions there is only one wisdom.  The late physicist David Bohm said he owed more to Cusa than to Einstein!

Recently I was giving a retreat at a Unitarian Universalist Center in Rowe, Massachusetts and a woman said to me: “I am so grateful that you, unlike Teilhard de Chardin, did not remain silent as the church asked.  You spoke out and took the consequences.”  I remarked that we live in a different time than Teilhard (who died in 1955), but I did appreciate her comment.  Ours are not a time for keeping silent.  The old wine skins are no longer holding the rich wine that is still flowing from the teachings, the life, and the story of Jesus.  New wine skins are needed to hold not only the rich lineage of the past but the mixing with other faith traditions, with scientific breakthroughs, with contemporary movements such as the women’s movement and the eco-justice movements, and today’s Biblical scholarship that can and ought to occur today.

Pope John XXIII’s Second Vatican Council of the early 1960’s which inspired many Catholics and non-Catholics alike has been called the “greatest religious event of the twentieth century.” It set the stage for a new future in religion to happen including a spreading of decision-making beyond Rome and empowerment of lay people and deep ecumenism.  It gathered  great theologians from all around the world—people like Karl Rahner, Hans Kung, M.D. Chenu, Yves Congar, Teilhard de Chardin, Edward Schillebeeckx and many others.  Sadly, the papacy of John Paul II crushed it all including the courageous response of Latin American Liberation Theology that supported the poor and oppressed in direct expression of Gospel values and, contrary to the spirit and law of Vatican II, launched a modern day Inquisition with Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) as its chief inquisitor.  It is my opinion (and that of many other theologians) that in squelching the Vatican Council, the Vatican has been in schism for 40 years.

Can the Catholic Church resurrect from its self-dug grave and experience another renaissance in giving great souls and ideas to the world?  Can it move beyond eras of Inquisitions, crusades, witch burnings, sexism, anti-semitism and other dark temptations?  Certainly not in its present form where curial bureaucrats take it upon themselves to censure all thought and creative movements.  But, as I point out in my recent book, The Pope’s War, if an angry and demanding lay movement rises up and declares the present and past papacies schismatic and moves ahead to deconstruct the church as we know it and reconstruct It on the authentic principles of Jesus’ spirit and teaching, and puts spirituality ahead of religion and travels lightly, surely something wonderful and needed could occur.

Memorial Day 2011

Yesterday I watched a film on PBS called “Most Honorable Son” which told the story of a Japanese American’s life as an airman in the American army in the Second World War.  It was a moving film for its reminding us of the many sacrifices so many made at home and abroad to defeat fascism.  400,000 Americans lost their lives in the wars in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific islands while defeating Germany, Italy and Japan.  Sixteen million Americans served in combat.  Many hundreds of thousands lost limbs or retained physical or mental scars from their combat days.  And the subject of the documentary, airman Ben Kuroki, endured much else as a decorated hero who had to fight racism in his own country and projections of betrayal from his Japanese people who were in concentration camps in the West while he served in air combat over France and Germany.

Meditating on this sacrifice of so many on the morning after that television program (and I am only counting the American sacrifices since today is America’s day to honor its dead soldiers), something  comes to mind.  The defeat of fascism, this great movement of bluster and control, of genocide and racial hatred, of bullying and advanced weaponry, of “institutionalized violence” and of the marriage of corporate and government powers—how complete was it?  We are told that the German surrender was “unconditional” and that the Italians switched to our side before the war’s end, but there is something deeply disturbing about news we pick up these days.

I am thinking of the return of fascism in the Roman Catholic Church today.  The honoring of Jose Escriva, founder of Opus Dei and card-carrying fascist priest by naming him a “saint.”  Escriva was, among other things, an admirer of Hitler and his Opus Dei tribe was happy to serve on fascist dictator Franco’s Cabinet for many years.  The support in the highest places in the Vatican for Fr. Maciel (yes, Pope John Paul II was so enamored of this man that he invited him along on plane rides and canonized his uncle and set a canonization of his mother into motion).  Maciel abused over 20 youths whom he attracted to his many seminaries and abused four of his own children (3 boys and a girl) born in two clandestine liasons.  He also very publicly supported the fascist dictator of Chile, Pinochet and Maciel’s papally-blessed organization, Legion of Christ, demanded vows that no one question the dictator, the “good Father,” who everyone knew was all about Jesus work on earth.  Then Communion and Liberation, called “the Opus Dei of Italy,” equally extreme in its put-down of women and freedom of conscience and Protestants and anything that smacks of democracy.  All these movements fully endorsed and abetted and sanctified by the higher-ups in the Vatican (including the secretary of state under John Paul II and the present secretary of state and Pope John Paul II himself whom the present pope is rushing into canonization).

Americans sacrificed much to bring fascism to an end.  Given today’s ecclesiastic history, the effort was only partially successful.  It is time to rise up against the well-healed efforts to render fascism fashionable once more and to wrap it in Biblical and Papal covers.  This would be, it seems to me, a rightful response to Memorial Day: Remember the fallen by carrying on their struggle—not by playing ecclesiastical couchpotato while the symbols of Christianity are seized once again by fascist sympathizers.  Resistance once called forth the courage and generosity of a generation of Americans.  It is still needed.  Now more than ever.

Fascism is on the return not only in fundamentalist church circles both Vatican and Protestant, it is also alive and steaming in the Supreme Court’s “Citizen’s United” declaration (recall that several members of the supreme court so eager to render this decision are also Opus Dei members).   This notorious decision has declared that any corporation has the same rights as an individual citizen especially when it comes to financing political campaigns.  Not since Mussolini himself defined fascism as “the marriage of government and corporations” has there been so egregious an endorsement of fascism from so high a place in American society.

I had two uncles who served in World War II and, luckily, came home.  One served in France and Germany and was among those who liberated Dachau.  The other was a marine who served in the Pacific theater including bloody battles of Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima.  Both are now deceased.  I wonder if either would be pleased with the return of fascism in our time.  I believe both would be shocked that such sacrifices as their generation made were so easily forgotten.

Thus, Memorial Day.  Let us Remember.  Not just by planting flags but by sustaining worthwhile resistance.  Amen.

Cosmic Wonder, Human Opportunity

This is a review of:  THE NEW UNIVERSE AND THE HUMAN FUTURE: HOW A SHARED COSMOLOGY COULD TRANSFORM THE WORLD by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack        Yale Press, 2011

This book is in every sense of the word, a prophetic book. Its message ranks right up there with those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Joel. Like the prophets, it is at times poetic, demanding, grounded, soaring, empowering, and always awe-inspiring.

Rabbi Heschel says the essence of the prophet’s work is to interfere, and Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams are doing nothing if they are not interfering. They are interfering with apathy, couch-potato-itis, anthropocentrism, and despair by inspiring us with the newly found reasons we have for waking up, getting involved, and resisting dumb media, amoral education, and frozen religious ideologies. They inspire us to do what prophets do: give birth to justice from a newly born heart, a newly born consciousness. And to shout the dangerous paths, the ways of folly, we are on. This book does all that and more.

I should offer a disclaimer here. I know and truly love Joel and Nancy. I know their marvelous book, The View from the Center of the Universe and recommend it to everyone I know. I know their sterling credentials as teachers of the new cosmology and the great respect Joel carries in the scientific community. Above all, I know their humility. While helping us access new scientific knowledge to recover our sense of the Cosmos, they also show up at spiritual events, dance circle dances, laugh with us lay people (meaning non-scientists), chant, meditate, make music, write poetry, and just plain participate. I like that about them. They are human beings as well as scientists. They are not preaching from an ivory tower or to the scientific choir alone (though they have the courage to take on the cynics and pessimists in that circle). Their message is for all of us: “Wake up before it is too late. Drink in the new good news of the universe. Join and build up a ‘cosmic society.’”

Wisely the authors point out that human consciousness evolves from self-awareness, to tribe, to religion, to nationality, to species, to Earth, and ultimately to Cosmos. We, like the universe, need to keep expanding (I think of Meister Eckhart: “God is delighted to watch your soul enlarge.”) We can so easily get stuck in any one of these smaller groupings — self (narcissism), tribe (tribalism), religion (my God can beat up your God/goddess), nation (who is the empire de jour? We are number one and the exceptional one). But Gaia and her pain is calling us beyond all these earlier identities to embrace Earth, which needs so much embracing today, and now Cosmos as well. We don’t have to abandon the earlier soul periods; we can incorporate them into this great act of growing our souls, expanding our consciousness. We can love self without being narcissistic; we can love our tribe without being tribalistic and hating other tribes; we can embrace a religious path without denying others theirs; we can be Americans (or Egyptians or Argentinians) without having to go to war to prove we are superior. Of course we are on a path of consciousness expansion. After all, this universe is biased in favor of expansion. This is a scientific fact.

Joel and Nancy are clearly in love with what science is learning today. Their love is contagious. Their enthusiasm ignites all who drink it in. They have the children in mind when they say “today’s children could be the first generation ever raised in the universe they actually live in,” and they urge us to teach the “powers of ten” to the kids and resist teaching the easy metaphors of selfishness, cynicism, or despair. “Earth itself is not a mess but a jewel of the cosmos, rich with life and potential, and possibly unique in all the heavens,” they declare, like twenty-first-century Davids singing new psalms.

Joel and Nancy have looked hard and analyzed deeply the amazing findings of the Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments from the past two decades of explosive findings in cosmology. Here is one metaphor that they put forth for our understanding:

Imagine that the entire universe is an ocean of dark energy. On that ocean there sail billions of ghostly ships, made of dark matter. At the tips of the tallest masts of the largest ships there are tiny beacons of light, which we call galaxies. With Hubble Space Telescope, the beacons are all we see. We don’t see the ships, we don’t see the ocean — but we know they’re there through the Double Dark theory.

They take on the literalists of science (who have so much in common with the literalists of the Bible) when they say:

If taken literally, scientific cosmology is completely misleading. There was no loud bang at the Big Bang, and it wasn’t big. (There was no size to compare it to.) Metaphor is our only entrée into invisible reality.

I have often said that the most important things in life are metaphors, whether we are speaking of life or death, spirit or sex, love or body. And the universe too is metaphor and accessible by metaphor. All the prophets knew these things. Metaphor carries us on wings larger than despair, self-pity, talk of “selfish genes,” and pessimism — all of which is so often a cover-up and escape from responsibility.

This is a book on ethics, a book about renewing our foundation for ethics. The authors talk passionately about the folly of our race as we face our own potential extinction and the extinction of this marvelous planet as we know it. They see our uniqueness not just in terms of this planet but also in terms of what we know about the universe. They urge us to “crack open our imaginations” and to wake up to the “accident” of our being “born at the turning point.” And what turning point is that? It goes back to the fact of the rediscovery of how unique we are as a species: “It took a series of outrageously improbable events on Earth, plus multiple cosmic catastrophes to earlier species like the dinosaurs before humans could evolve.… Our level of intelligence (and higher) may be extremely rare” in the universe.

We Are the Self-Consciousness of the Universe

With our uniqueness comes a special responsibility, for if humans go down, like many primate species before us have, then something very precious will be lost in the universe.

From the point of view of the universe as a whole, intelligent life may be the rarest of occurrences and the most in need of protection…. We — all intelligent, self-aware creatures that may exist in any galaxy — are the universe’s only means of reflecting on and understanding itself. Together we are the self-consciousness of the universe. The entire universe is meaningless without us. This is not to say that the universe wouldn’t exist without intelligent beings. Something would exist, but it wouldn’t be a universe, because a universe is an idea, and there would be no ideas.

We are living at a “pivotal” moment in the history of the universe for today we can “see” the entire history of the universe, but there will come a time when, because of the expansion of the cosmos, the past will no longer be visible; distant galaxies will disappear over the horizon. We are able to take in more galaxies today than ever will be perceived in the future. And, in our own local group of galaxies, because of gravity at work, there will be a blending of the Milky Way and Andromeda that will shut our descendants off from the rest of the universe. No wonder Joel and Nancy feel so called to sing the universe’s story at this time.

The authors recognize our moral obligations to change as a species. With the human race now at almost 7 billion people, the inflation we have been undergoing is not sustainable. We could — and are — destroying our planet as we know it. This is why they call for an ethic of sustainability that is itself sustained by the wonder of the world we now know we live in, the universe at its pivotal moment. They point out how we do not know if there is other intelligent life out there but we do know what we have here. Moreover:

We randomly-alive-today people actually have the power to end this evolutionary miracle, or not…. Without human beings, as far as anyone knows, the universe will be silenced forever. No meaning, no beauty, no awe, no consciousness, no “laws” of physics. Is any quarrel or pile of possessions worth this?

We need to adjust to realities as we now know them. For example, talk of “space war” is beyond dangerous because if we launch just a truckload of gravel into space we will destroy not only all sophisticated weaponry but also the satellites that we all depend on for weather information, global positioning systems, and communication.

Enough Is a Feast

We must move beyond the inflationary period of economics, of judging things by growth of GNP. We have to realize that spiritual relationships can grow continuously — but economic ones can’t. Joel and Nancy write:

Our drive for meaning, spiritual connection, personal and artistic expression, and cultural growth can be unlimited … if we valued them above consumer goods, then we would have a new paradigm for human progress. For our universe the most creative period, which brought forth galaxies, stars, atoms, planets, and life, came after inflation ended, and this could also be true for humanity. A stable period can last as long as human creativity stays ahead of our physical impact on the earth.

If this isn’t a call for a simpler lifestyle I don’t know what is.

What is right action? “The goal should be sustainable prosperity, which is perfectly defined by the Zen saying ‘enough is a feast.’… Nonstop creativity will be essential to maintain long term stability.”

This is a daring book. The authors take on the hypothesis of multiple universes and draw a stunning conclusion:

If the theory of Eternal Inflation is right, then our universe — the entire region created by our Big Bang — is an incredibly rare jewel: a tiny but long-lived pocket in the heart of eternity where by chance exponential inflation stopped, time began, space opened up, and the laws of physics allowed interesting things to happen and complexity to evolve.

Just as our Earth is an “incredibly rare jewel,” so too is our universe, whether it has happened alone or is one among many. The authors of this book have not grown numb to awe and wonder.

The authors also take on the subject of God’s causation when they ask this question:

Is this then at last the place to credit God as the literal first cause? That’s an option. But rather than skipping lightly over eternity itself to paste in the idea of God ‘causing eternity,’ we might do better to think of the beginning as being just as unknown as the distant future, and ourselves, as true explorers, moving outward from the center in both directions. In cosmology both the distant past and the distant future are in a real sense ahead of us, the one waiting to be discovered, the other to be created.

As a theologian, I hear this as a clarion call to rediscover the apophatic Divinity, the God of Darkness, the pathway of letting go and letting be, the God who “has no name and will never be given a name” (Eckhart), where the alpha (beginning) and omega (ending) are both bathed in mystery and in darkness — a double darkness, we might say. It’s a call for a transcendence that is not “up” so much as deep down

There is wisdom and passion in these pages. There are sacred cows to let go of, inner work to do, and outer work to accomplish. But we have the tools. Do we have the will and the heart? Anyone who studies this book will be deepening and strengthening both. Read this book and grow your soul. Right behavior can and should follow.

101 Reasons for not Canonizing Pope John Paul II

Pope Benedict XVI is in a big hurry to canonize his former boss Pope John Paul II, who hired him as Director of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition) in 1981 and stood by him for 23 years as he brought back the Inquisition contrary to the letter and spirit of Vatican II.

Following are 101 reasons not to rush.

1. The very tradition of canonization was seriously compromised under JPII when the office of devil’s advocate was done away with.  An immediate pay off was the unprecedently swift canonization of Fr. Jose Escriva, founder of Opus Dei. A woman who worked closely with Escriva for 13 years and wrote a book that detailed his fits of anger, pique, sexist attacks and more was denied any appearance at the proceedings.  As were those who heard him say he admired Hitler.

2. Special privileges were bestowed directly from JPII to Fr. Maciel, notorious for having on the one hand raised more money than anyone in church history but on the other having sexually abused over 20 of his seminarians. Even after these facts were made public, Pope JPII supported the man and his organization, the Legion of Christ, ordaining dozens of Maciel’s priests in large public events in St Peter’s square. As it turned out, he had two wives on the side and sexually abused his four children (three boys and a girl).  Maciel was a fierce supporter of Chilean dictator Pinochet who murdered over 700 priests, nuns and lay leaders.  Numerous other covering-up of pedophile clergy around the world occurred on Pope JPII’s watch as continued news articles make clear.

3. Pope JPII, with Ratzinger leading the attack, dismantled and emasculated what was probably the most Christ-like movement in the past 500 years of church history, namely the base community movement and liberation theology movements of Latin America.  Instead of supporting the poor and those standing with them in Jesus’ name, JPII replaced the brave and justice-committed church leaders (such as Oscar Romero) with those committed to the fortunes of the rich and powerful.

4. Pope JPII emasculated the most alive liturgical movements in Europe, namely those of the Dutch Catholic Church and forbade Bishop Casigalida to offer an Afro-Brazilian liturgy he  had created with Brazilian artists.

5. Pope JPII dumbed down the leadership of the church by appointing bishops whose sole qualification was that they were sure to be obedient Yes men.  This had everything to do with the priestly pedophilia scandal not being dealt with appropriately.

6. Pope JPII put the Virgin Mary on a pedestal but allowed women no responsibilities in the church, forbidding priests to use the feminine pronoun for God (as if the Divine Feminine is not just as important as the Divine Masculine) and even forbidding girls to be altar girls.

7. When he removed the condemnation of Galileo after 450 years, JPII commented that religion should learn from science.  Yet he fully concurred with Cardinal Ratzinger’s two documents that condemn homosexuals mercilessly and without any scientific backing (science having demonstrated that 8-10% of any given human population is going to be homosexual and 464 other species with homosexual populations have been revealed).

8. Pope JPII, contrary to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, eliminated the principle of collegiality along with theological diversity and freedom of conscience and lay leadership and substituted for it a Vatican dictatorship that claims all rights to appoint bishops and to teach as the only “magisterium” of the church.  He “killed all theology in Europe” according to a professor at the Institut catholique de Paris.  He confused “infallibility” with totalitarianism and ruled with an iron fist that would make Ghadaffy look proud.  A Vatican insider in JP II’s reign told me that “in front of the cameras he was very forgiving (as to his attempted assassin), but within the Vatican anyone who disagreed with anything was gone in 24 hours.”

9. Return of Simony.  Not only was the Maciel scandal awash in cash, but the pope’s private secretary, a Polish priest (now a cardinal), was charging $50,000 to attend private Masses with the Pope as reported by Jason Berry in the National Catholic Reporter.

10-101. Ninety-one theologians and activists from many countries were condemned under JPII’s pontificate, a good number of whom lost their livelihoods as well as their ministries, some suffered nervous breakdowns or died of heart attacks under the pressure imposed on them by Rome and rabid right wing attackers buttressed by the Vatican.

Some Thoughts on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Beyond

April 22, 2011

Michael Lerner has asked me to write a few thoughts about the message of Good Friday and Easter.  I appreciate his invitation, a sign of the meaning of deep ecumenism and what we have to learn from each others faith traditions.

To me, the “paschal mystery” of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the rabbi is an archetypal reminder about how, as science now teaches us, all things in the cosmos live, die and resurrect.  Supernovas, galaxies, solar systems, planets, beings that inhabit our planet—we all have our time of existence and of passing out of existence.  But we leave something behind for further generations and that constitutes resurrection.  Supernovas leave elements behind in a great explosion that seed other solar systems, planets and ever our very bodies.  Every being leaves something behind as food for others—Einstein said no energy is lost in the universe and Hildegard of Bingen said no warmth is lost in the universe.  I like to say that no beauty is lost in the universe.  The universe has a memory for energy, warmth and beauty.   Nothing our ancestors accomplished is lost—so long as we remember.  Hopefully, as humans, we leave beauty behind and wise progeny, maybe books or paintings or scientific breakthroughs or insights, or healed souls or bodies, etc. etc.  Our resurrection is very much a part of our creativity.  Otto Rank: The artist is one who wants to leave behind a gift.

Jesus left behind the gift of his teachings, a distillation as I see it of the basic teachings of his Jewish ancestors: That compassion and justice are what link us to the Divine and that we are to look not to empires or to objects for the Kingdom of God but within ourselves and among others in community for the love that is at once our love of neighbor and our love of God, a love “that the world cannot give.”  In other words, to “all our relations.”  The fact of his being tortured and killed in a most ignominious way by the Roman Empire is a stark reminder that we do not take on the powers of darkness as our prophetic vocations require without paying a price.  But the story is that life triumphs over death, even if it has to succumb to powers of death at times and the form that a resurrected life takes is diverse.  It often surprises!

We do not die once.  We all die many times.  Life does that to us with our losses, our betrayals, our own mistakes and emptying out.  But we also resurrect on a regular basis as well.  We forgive, we are forgiven, we bottom out, we move on, we give birth anew thus that life and death are more synergetic that we usually imagine them to be.  “God’s exit is her entrance,” as Meister Eckhart put it.  The depths of the valley of death do not overcome the power of life which makes things new again.  Injustice seems to triumph so often but justice will have the last word provided we live and work for it.

To me these are some of the passages that the Good Friday/Easter Sunday archetype bring to awareness.  There is no resurrection without visiting Hades (the story is that Saturday following his death Jesus visited the underworld).  Good Friday rules for a short period.  But the longer period is the new life and the victory over death and the fear of death that Easter Sunday represents.  It is that hope that rises daily with every new sun.  Moving beyond the fear of death we can live fully again and cease our immortality projects, our empire building and pyramid constructing (wall street too) and get on with…living.  Which is sharing.  Heschel: “Just to be is holy; just to live is a blessing.”  Now our fear of death does not have to rule our lives.  Now we can live fully, generously and creatively.

Posting 95 Theses at Cardinal Law’s Basilica

Just before we started the event I asked my 30 year old woman translator if she was scared.  “No,” she said. “Even though we don’t know what is going to happen, I am looking forward to it.  It is important that we do this and what happens will happen.”  Courage!  Always a sign of the spirit.

The action at Cardinal Law’s basilica was memorable for many reasons: the crowd that gathered (it was announced beforehand in the paper), their questions; their passion in taking on the policemen especially around the right to hang the theses on a gate; the beauty of the morning with sun shining from an all-blue sky; the length of time we stayed there—about 80 minutes (much larger gathering than Wittenberg);  the Vatican plainclothes police with dark sun glasses staring at me the whole time; and above all the strategy and courage of the young people who created the excellent poster which looked like a medieval Manuscript in a large type that yet was practical and easy to read; their flexibility in adapting to the policemen’s tactics, for example they smartly engaged the moment and the Vatican plain clothed police when the crowd had dispersed.  I was away from this engagement but saw dramatic interaction from where I was.  I so look forward to seeing their film.  I especially wonder if Stephano the filmer got the attack by the Vatican thugs of the second film maker on film?

How right Barbara was about 1) Vatican police dictating orders to Roman police and 2) the thugs that are policing the Vatican these days. Just as I learned after my Wittenberg action how much darker the Vatican was than I had anticipated, so with this Italian, Roman, action, I learned how much darker still were the forces and veritable police state ruling not only Vatican City but, in many respects, Rome itself.  Penny Lernoux’ words are chilling: “Ratzinger is only a front man for the German-Polish mafia,” she said.  Or Barbara’s words: “The Vatican is run by a gang of mafia thugs.”

Our protest was non-violent and remained that way in the face of violence on the part of the Vatican police.  Are Italians forbidden to preach or to listen to a preacher in a public square?  Was the Basilica event an historic moment?  One of empowerment for Italians vis a vis the church?  Consider that Italy never underwent the Protestant Reformation (but only the counter-Reformation of the Council of Trent).

Our videographers and photographers were taking pictures of the police videographers and photographers and vice versa.  It was like a scene from old East Germany.  The Stasi.  That was the feeling emanating from the Vatican police.

Before we began, one of our people went into the church to scout things out.  Many policemen were inside.  He went up to one and said, “I heard there was going to be a demonstration here today,” (or something close to that) and the policeman got very agitated and said: “No there won’t be.  We will see to that.”  So that was our first clue that our demonstration would be outdoors and even outside the fence.  But as it happened, even that distance was not enough to satisfy the Vatican police (who apparently have very broad jurisdiction in Rome itself).  During the course of my presentation and the q and a period of about 80 minutes, the sheet containing the theses were taken down (I took them back at one point from the policeman who took them down), put up again, taken down, held up by some of the participants standing by, etc. etc.  Up-down, Up down, Up-down.

A man who asked some very sophisticated questions about my presentation (he had the air of a lawyer about him and was of mature age), ended up in a shouting match with the policeman who was literally receiving phone calls from higher ups on his ear phone telling him what to do.  From the pained look on his face I had the distinct impression that he wished he was elsewhere—like rescuing a cat stranded in a tree or even a spouse form domestic abuse or handing out traffic violations—just anywhere other than in a church courtyard on a Sunday morning being dictated to by plainclothes police with their phones in their ear and hearing a presenter calling for a religious reformation (or revolution?).  The shouting match between the police and this “lawyer” person was about 1) who owned the property we stood on and 2) Who owned the fence demarcating this property from the church steps and on which we hung the theses.  The “lawyer” said in an angry voice to the policeman, “my taxes paid for this sidewalk and fence so keep your hands off the preacher’s theses.”  There was considerable back and forth.

Meanwhile, “radio radicale” was there the entire time with a microphone in my and the translator’s face and with a number of questions posed as soon as I finished my presentation.  My presentation followed my 4 points I laid out in my “New Reformation” book—how our day paralleled Luther’s day in four respects: 1) invention of printing press/invention of electronic media 2) politics as rise of nationalism/politics as globalization and sparks of democracy 3) rise of humanist scholarship of which Luther was a part/rise of scientific and theological scholarship of our time and 4) corruption in the highest places of the church/corruption in the highest places of the church including Cardinal Law overseeing this particular cathedral, he who passed one priest from parish to parish who abused 150 boys and who now sits on a commission in the Vatican appointing bishops around the world!  A woman professor told me she took a 3 hours train ride to be present for the event.  She taught anthropology and religion and invited me to come to her university to lecture—they would pay for my trip to Italy she said.

Before we began, one man came up to me who was about 44 years old and said: “I no longer call myself a Catholic but simply a Christian.”

All the while the young members of our team were alert and smiling and doing their assigned tasks whether taking video, guarding the theses, mixing with the group, translating, photographing the cops, hanging around me for protection.  (They had arranged all that beforehand among themselves with no coaching from me.)  They did it with smiles on their faces. They gathered with the plainclothes Vatican cops when the event had finished and argued vociferously about their demands to see their papers and my documents as well.  “We have done no crime so you have no right to demand our papers,” they declared.  But maybe they had committed a crime.  The crime of inviting people on church soil to think.

Their final act was to keep the thug Vatican cops demanding my papers engaged while one of their group quietly slipped away, came rapidly up to me and said “walk away fast” to the taxi stand at the side of the church.  Drama.  A day of drama.  Working with the young people was marvelous.  They were alert, flexible, prepared, strong, smiling, committed, competent, brave.  Intergenerational wisdom indeed!  Intergenerational courage also.

A number of people requested copies of the theses to read and study.  We told them that they would be posted in the Italian version on the Fazi web page.  Among phrases I heard from thoughtful Italians in conversation during my visit: “The church is dead.”  “We are a culture today with no new ideas. Old people are running things in a very old way.”  “Unemployment among the young is at 24%.  Many are being supported by their grandparents and parents even after college graduation sincere there are no jobs to be had.”  “A growing tension between the young and old.”  “Old money is running everything. “ People are scared with the bad economy.  The women’s movement is very weak.  “We are a conservative country.  Even liberal minded people have trouble imagining women priests.”  You can get a college degree for just $2000 per year but there are no jobs after school.  “The one thing Italy gives the world consistently is…Beauty.  That is our only gift to the world.”

I ask myself: Why are the Italians seemingly so keen on my work at this time?  One reason is the timing.  There is a lot of anger among Catholics and it is clear that first a Polish papacy and then a German papacy have not always sat well with Italians.  Another is that there is no love lost for Ratzinger himself.  In my time there and even near St Peter’s I did not see one poster for sale of Pope Ratzinger.  Another is that Aquinas with his non-dualistic philosophy is SO Italian in spirit in so many ways and the Augustinian mind-sets of the two recent popes is not at all of the Aquinas mind-set.  Furthermore, we need to remind ourselves that the Protestant Reformation did not penetrate Italy; it affected it by way of the counter-reformation but that did not question the powers of the papacy.  My 95 theses do put deeper questions.  Is calling for a Reformation in the church today rousing a sleeping giant in Italy?  The Italian capacity for real spirituality in the creation spiritual tradition is vast.  Is the Roman Catholic church, together with the media, not perfectly set up for non-violent resistance? For church-step sit ins?  For filling the jails?  For exposing the darkness of the Vatican and its ways at this time in history?

All in all, it was a most amazing trip—perhaps the most amazing gig in my life.  The people I met from the publishing house, Vito and our public dialog at the amazing conference of writers, his passion and radical critical mind, the many serious and passionate and intellectually-solid interviews on radio, in magazines and newspapers, and the amazing TV program.  The filming and event at Law’s Basilica.  Much to remember and to build on.

The abuse at the hands of church has been going on for so many centuries—buttressed by an ideology of suffering and penance and sin, that I had no idea what Romans have suffered at in the hands of the Roman Catholic church.  This is one reason a number of commentators called “original blessing” a “Copernican revolution” for a religion based on punitive images of God and a consciousness of sin. A difficult thing to do, to change it. I recall a Native American woman who was also a Catholic returning from a ceremony at the Vatican to beatify Blessed Tekawitha: “There are evil spirits in that place, (i.e. the Vatican)” she recalled.

I think most Catholics today—Italy, Ireland, United States, Latin America and parts in between—are in a complete state of disgust.  This morning’s Boston Globe quotes some Catholics in Ireland.  One says: “When we were growing up, you believed in the church more so than you believed in God….Now the whole thing is transformed.  You believe in God but you don’t believe in the church.”  And a priest, Fr. Tony Cullen, says: “I’d like to see the clerical church die, and the proper church emerge, the church of the people.”  What to do?  How create new structures?  Stay and fight?  Abandon it altogether?  Fight from the outside?  All of the above?  One thing is certain: The clerical church is dying.