A man who attends my church sent me Sister Joan Chittister's latest essay, which was written last week before Pope John Paul II had died. I want to share it today for those who haven't yet seen it but might appreciate it. It has to appear to outsiders that the liberal/Democratic blogs are responding to the Pope's death, like we respoded to the Terri Schiavo case, with more "bits of shouting" and anger against religion. But I know that's not all of us, and plenty here are open to reflection in between the stretches of "fighting the good fight".
They brought the Pope back to the Vatican, the papers said, "in a people-mover with tinted windows; looking fairly alert." It was, I figured, a symbol not only of the Pope's physical condition but of the spiritual state of the entire church. We are all living behind the tinted windows of another age.
(More below the jump)
What we took to be eternal truth in so many areas has turned out to be temporary at best, in some cases even highly questionable. We wonder now about the nature of life, the purpose of government, the place of religion, the role of institutions, the power of power.
We look "fairly alert" but we are all struggling to breathe, to speak, to go on living in a world in which parts of it, and parts of ourselves, as well, are clearly long gone. The problem is that no one is really sure which parts they are.
This pope's last real message to the world may well be that silence and faith, in the face of such change, are the only appropriate responses to it.
All hope for being able to control it is over now. The questions rage without end. Should Terri Schaivo's feeding tube be reinserted? Was the invasion of Iraq moral? Should Social Security, the lifeline of our middle-class elderly be ended, changed, or stay the same? The questions abound. The answers are slow in coming.
Oh, force is always a factor, of course. We can force our answers on other people--and many are trying. But once a group, any group, lacks the power to enforce its will--like the Roman Empire, for instance, or the old European ruling families, or even the U.S. army in Iraq, whatever its firepower--there is nothing left to do but face the unwanted circumstances: to listen, to learn, and to change with the changes around us.
Force always masquerades as real but when the masses stop listening, it dies. And we are there, it seems.
Authoritarianism, the notion that any one person can have all the answers, has become a thing of the past. It has outlived itself, in fact.
No one is completely under anyone's real domination anymore. People know too much to be fooled. They travel too often to be duped into thinking that any one way is the only possible right way to do a thing. Because I said so has ceased to be proof of anything. Is almost ludicrous. Is barely heard, let alone listened to much.
The times, as always, are indeed a'changing.
Read the rest here
http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/fwis/